


Teenage Wasteland

by MissMoe



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Amateur Hour BDSM, Anal Sex, Appalling politically incorrect language, Armin's grandpa is a horny old goat, Blow Jobs, Dildos, Dubious Consent, Eren is horny but nobody wants him, Everyone is crushing on someone, Facials, First Time, Hate to Love, Hot teacher, Humor, Jean thinks he's straight, K-pop References, Masturbation, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Rape/Non-con, Recreational Drug Use, Rimming, Romance, Sexist Language, Smut, Teen Angst, They aren't fighting titans, They're fighting their raging hormones, Threesome - F/F/M, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2019-02-19 20:59:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 42,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13132086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissMoe/pseuds/MissMoe
Summary: Eren and Mikasa watch a YouTube video on how to give head and find out that none other than Armin Arlert, their hentai-loving freak of a classmate at school, is giving the demonstration on cock swallowing.A modern day AU peak into the lives of the horny teens attending Trost High School.





	1. Chapter 1

“Armin? Ho-ly shiiiit!” Eren’s mouth was agape, his eyes a-poppin’.

“Keep it down, loser.” Mikasa landed a swift punch on Eren’s shoulder, knocking him off her bed and onto the floor. She was ready to rip a new hole into her dumbass fake brother. “Do you want your Mom and Dad to hear you screaming like a girl?”

Speaking of screaming like a girl…she turned her eyes back to her laptop screen. Yep. That was their round-headed blond-haired classmate alright, rocking those ginormous grey-blue eyes and that pageboy haircut like some shrimpy, barely pubescent version of He-Man. Armin wasn’t the president of their high school’s Otaku Club for nothing. Armin! The same Armin who dressed up as Sailor Moon every year for Halloween since first grade and whose bedroom was wallpapered with downloaded pictures of all his favorite hentai goddesses. The same Armin who got beat up on a regular basis by that asshole jock, Reiner, while Reiner’s retarded sidekick, Bertolt, stood by shrugging his shoulders. More importantly, they were fifteen years old, for shit’s sake, and Armin was already a master at fellatio?

Mikasa furrowed her brows, determined to learn a thing or two about sucking dick from her gender-slaying friend. Armin wasn’t just any ordinary weirdo weakling. He was as smart as he was freaky and she respected anyone brave enough to walk out of the house looking the way he did. Besides, she was totally crushing on her art teacher, Levi Ackerman, a man who shared the same last name as her deceased father. The thought that they might be related somehow added another layer of frisson to her teen girl obsession with him. That and the fact that Levi was shorter than her, the king of snarky sarcasm, and at least twice her age but still smoking hot and therefore utterly unattainable…goddamn it! She was going to seduce the shit out of that deep-voiced little man if it were the last thing she did in life. She also knew that Eren was creaming his pants over the same dude because Eren just _had_ to be an unmitigated douchebag. There was no way in hell she was going to lose to Eren. No. Fucking. Way. She would need to acquire some kickass bedroom skills in order to snag a juicy piece of male meat like Levi Ackerman, so she had turned to her solution for any and all problems: YouTube.

There were a bazillion tutorials on how to properly give head but one of them immediately caught her eye because she recognized the face in the screenshot. Plus, the title was a giveaway: Armin’s Top Tips on Sucking Dick. Jeez Louise. The boy did _not_ beat around the bush.

Eren clambered back onto her bed and flopped down beside her rubbing his bruised shoulder. “That hurt, you bitch.” He elbowed her arm in retaliation and the video skipped forward from the jostling.

“Do that again and you’ll get one in the face,” Mikasa threatened with a raised fist and then stopped mid-swing.

Talk about getting one in the face…both she and Eren were suddenly mesmerized by the scene playing out in the video. Armin was no longer fondling the array of various sized and colored dildos sitting on his desk like some mad scientist in his lab and sucking them one-by-one into his mouth with frightening ease. Instead, a living, breathing man with an impressive erection was standing in front of a seated Armin and spurting massive amounts of pearlescent jism onto Armin’s face. Armin’s mouth was hanging open, his tongue out like an over-heated dog, his eyes rolled up into his skull in bliss, high-pitched moans tumbling out of his cum-splattered lips. The man’s head was out of camera range, but the heart-shaped birthmark on his cock and the distinct tattoo—spelling out ‘Pound Town’ in Gothic lettering—running across his lower abs above his blond thatch of pubic hair made Eren suck in a shocked gasp.

“Th-that’s Reiner!” he veritably shrieked. “I’d know that dick anywhere!” Indeed, Eren had the great misfortune of being in the same gym class as Reiner and had seen the overly mature teen flaunting his disgustingly developed junk in the locker room and showers too many times. “He and Armin? They’ve been... _doing it_? How can that be? What about all those beatdowns?”

It was true. Armin got flattened each and every time Reiner passed him in the hallways, his pizza stolen and a wedgie given every day in the cafeteria. To say their classmate was bullied by Reiner on a daily basis at school was like stating the laws of physics: it was something unchanging and certain. And yet. Could it all have been just an act? What the hell kind of game were those two playing at?

Eren whipped out his phone and mashed a few buttons.

“What are you doing?” asked Mikasa. She closed her laptop and sat up, feeling a hot rush of wetness between her legs. Shit. Now she couldn’t get the image of Levi cumming on her face out of her head.

“Calling Armin of course, dummy. Hey, Armin! Armin! You sick fuck!” Then Eren jumped off the bed and headed off to his own room, probably to pick Armin’s brains while he jacked off.

Mikasa sighed, her room peaceful and quiet now that her jerk of a fake brother was finally gone. She got up, locked the door, and laid back down on her bed, closed her eyes and thought of Levi and his tiny, taut body with its perfectly formed buttocks, his jet black hair and the way it always fell over his eyes—those eyes, those cruel, cold, mocking, unyielding eyes with pupils like bullets piercing her heart. She reached a hand down and touched herself underneath her panties. Christ, she was sopping wet. She would have to go back and watch the entire video but, for now, she had enough rolling around in her head to get off in no time. She wondered if Levi’s dick looked like Reiner’s. Eww, Reiner. That guy was such a loudmouthed, arrogant ape. Levi never raised his voice; he always spoke softly, yet he could cut anyone down to size with his biting comments. In fact, earlier in the week in art class Levi had utterly humiliated that idiot Jean who had been stalking her since the first day of class. They had all propped their canvas boards along the railing for the critique session and Jean had rambled on for his allotted five minutes about how his painting was an existential haiku on the non-conformist love affair between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. Levi had followed up with the droll observation, “Hmm…it looks to me like you took a three-hour dump and then wiped your ass on the canvas.” The entire class had roared with laughter, but Levi had merely uncrossed his arms and moved on to the next canvas, his expression as stony as ever.

And now Mikasa imagined that same stony expression on Levi’s face as she knelt between his legs and sucked his cock, just like Armin did with that pink dildo, imagined the kinds of sounds Levi would make as she licked around the crown and pumped her fist up and down the shaft. Would he moan? Would he say, “Mikasa, I love you. You’re so perfect. So beautiful”? Would he pull on her hair? Caress her cheeks? Lift her into his arms and kiss her on the lips, push his tongue into her mouth, take possession of her? Her slick fingers moved in and out of her wet pussy only it was Levi’s cock sliding so deliciously inside her. Levi. Levi. She pulled her fingers out and brushed them against her clit. Levi. Levi. With her other hand, she pushed back in, rubbing her clit harder now, faster, heat building until she felt that telltale ache rise up and crash through her and she came saying his name in breathy pants, writhing on the sheets, his beautiful face gazing down at her. Levi. You’re mine.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reiner throws a Halloween party. Some sweet treats are enjoyed.

Reiner actually had a crush on Krista. He had a _thing_ for petite, blond-haired feminine creatures, but since Krista was always in the company of that ball-busting man-hater, Ymir, he kept his distance because Ymir would find some way to eviscerate him if he tried to say more than two words to Krista. A few years back, Ymir had chewed out Reiner’s best buddy Marcel when they were all partying around a bonfire and now Marcel was locked away in some juvenile rehabilitation center for the mentally deranged. He couldn’t understand what Krista saw in Ymir. Besides being a world-class bitch, Ymir was nothing to write home about appearance-wise: she had mousy brown hair and a face notable only for its perpetually sour expression. And, yet, Krista doted on Ymir, always had a brilliant smile for her, was always giggling in that high-pitched girly way of hers. Christ, he wanted to marry that teeny tiny Krista, but Krista never giggled for _him_ , the great Reiner Braun, six-foot-one and two hundred ten pounds of square-jawed awesomeness and man enough for any female on the planet. How could Krista not see this?

Maybe it was Bertolt’s fault. That dull, mute excuse for a human was always following him around like some anti-chick magnet, throwing him sideways glances every time he hit on a girl. Maybe Bertolt thought of himself as Reiner’s wingman but, goddamn it, Reiner didn’t need a freaking wingman. He could get a piece of pussy just fine without any help. Except. He wasn’t exactly succeeding in that endeavor. He had done his best to win the affection of another blond-haired girl—Annie Leonhart—in eighth grade but Annie had kicked his ass in gym class when he suggested they get it on, _literally_ kicked his ass and put him flat on his back on the wrestling mat, and he decided she wasn’t worth all the pain and humiliation. Besides, Bertolt was also hot for Annie and Reiner was more than happy to pass that merciless ice queen on to him, even if she was really cute in that scary, cock-shriveling way of hers. Now he was a sophomore at Trost High School and already a star center on the varsity football squad—a sure recipe for success with the ladies—but the only thing Reiner had managed to accomplish in the romance department was finding the next best thing to Krista, someone equally blond and petite and girly: Armin Arlert.

He hadn’t intended to make Armin his sex slave. In fact, the first time he saw Armin at school, he had turned to Bertolt and asked in confusion, “What the fuck is _that_? Is that thing a dude or a chick?” Then he found out that the ‘thing’ was in his fifth period gym class, along with that obnoxious Eren Jaeger, and he saw with his own eyes in the locker room that the ‘thing’ was packing a perfectly normal set of male genitalia. Fine. So Armin was a boy. At first, Reiner had only wanted to beat the crap out of him for all the standard reasons: Armin was a freshman and small and a total nerd and therefore a prime target for ass-whooping—but every time he shoved Armin into the lockers or slapped him around just for fun, Armin had…well… _liked_ it.

“Go ahead and do that again, you no-neck creep! You might gain a brain cell or two rubbing up against me! Betcha popped a boner!” Armin had shouted in that nasal twang of his when Reiner had stuck his leg out and tripped Armin at the bottom of the stairwell.

Reiner had been shocked by the kid’s insolence. “I have a neck, you little prick, and I’m going to break yours the next time I see you." 

Sure enough, the next time he saw Armin in the hallway, Reiner wrapped his big hand around Armin’s delicate neck and pinned him against the concrete block wall. He bent his head low and growled into Armin’s ear, “How many brain cells are you going to give me this time, Little Miss Einstein?”

Armin could feel Reiner’s breath hot against his cheek and, for some inexplicable reason, it made him flutter his eyelashes right back in Reiner’s face. Dang. Reiner jerked away as if he had been tasered. What the fuck was _that_? That barest whisper of a touch felt like a jolt of electricity. Reiner turned abruptly and stalked off, his cock jumping in his pants like a dog eager for a bloody steak. This was bad, so very bad indeed. He wasn’t interested in wimpy blond-haired boys, but if he let his imagination run wild just a little…actually it didn’t take _any_ imagination. Armin was undeniably adorable in that girly way, so very adorable, so ripe for things Reiner couldn’t even put into coherent thoughts; he could only _feel_ them in the erratic hammering of his heart and in the throbbing ache centered at his groin. He passed Krista in the hallway, heard her soprano voice as she chatted with Ymir and, for the first time, Reiner didn’t turn back to gaze longingly at _her_. His eyes fell on Armin instead as the boy stooped over the floor to collect all the books that Reiner had knocked out of his backpack. His bangs were hanging over his face but Reiner could still see that Armin’s cheeks were flushed a beautiful pink with anger. A smug smile twisted across Reiner’s lips as he walked on to his algebra class. There was no way he’d be able to work out the value of ‘x’ now. No, his mind was already focused on other things, like how pink Armin’s cheeks were and how smooth they would feel against his lips, probably as smooth as a baby’s bottom.

It didn’t take long for Reiner to find out for himself. He decided to throw a keg party at his house for Halloween. Even though Reiner was sixteen, he looked like he was thirty and no one ever carded him at the liquor store. The densely wooded area located behind his house was used regularly for parties by the neighborhood teens because the adults never went back there. It was easy to build a bonfire, drink, smoke, and have sex without any fear of discovery. The place—which was littered with empty beer bottles, cigarette butts, and spent condoms—was lovingly referred to as ‘Pound Town’ and Reiner liked it so much he had the name tattooed onto his lower abs when he turned fifteen. It had been a birthday present to himself but, unfortunately, he had yet to make good on it. He was still a virgin by all accounts and he couldn’t stand to think that Ymir had likely squeezed Krista’s tits a few hundred times, maybe even tasted her sweet pussy, while he had only been having marital relations with his own right hand. Sure, Annie had technically touched his balls via a vicious kick, but that wasn’t exactly enjoyable.

Armin’s eyes were like two enormous blue marbles as they widened in surprise. He was in the cafeteria for his lunch period and Reiner wasn’t even trying to steal his pizza or give him a wedgie. Instead, he was inviting him to his Halloween party that Saturday night. After the shock wore off, a slew of questions tumbled out of Armin’s mouth, like, was it a costume party? and would there be adult supervision? and if not, then would there be alcohol and what kind? and would there be drugs and what kind? and okay he would come but only if he could bring his best friends Eren and Mikasa and— 

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Reiner interrupted. “Just come to the party. I don’t care what you wear or who you bring. Just show up.” He patted Armin on the head and was pleasantly thrilled by the silky softness of his hair. Jesus. This was just too ridiculous and oh so exciting! ‘Pound Town’ baby, here I come!

***

The moon was high in the sky when Armin showed up at Reiner’s house accompanied by Eren and Mikasa. Eren had his face painted green and was got up like The Hulk in a puffy body suit, Mikasa was in a midriff-revealing two-piece kickboxing outfit with the words ‘Ronda Rousey for President’ spelled out in sequins across her chest, and Armin was dressed like a sexy French maid. A woman who looked to be Reiner’s mother answered the door and examined each of them carefully before resting her concerned eyes on Armin.

“Do your parents know what you’re wearing, young lady?” asked Reiner’s mom.

“He lives with his grandfather,” Eren chimed in. “His parents dumped him on the old geezer a few years ago.”

Well, that kinda explained things. “They’re in the back,” Reiner’s mom said, letting them in. “There’s food in the kitchen and then you can go out through the back porch if you want to be outside. Have fun.”

They made their way through the hallway of the Dutch Colonial house and into the kitchen, where they found Sasha Blouse stuffing her face with KFC Sauceless Hot Wings. She was standing next to Annie, her classmate, who was sipping beer out of a red plastic cup. Annie was dressed in an outfit almost identical to Mikasa’s, except her tank top had the words ‘I’ll Break Your Dick’ spelled out in sequins. Annie was a sophomore, like Reiner and Sasha, and Mikasa was instantly impressed. They knew each other from the football squad, where Annie was a running back. Even though Mikasa was only a freshman, she had made the varsity team as a wide receiver, unlike Eren, who was only a backup on the junior varsity team because he couldn’t hold a candle to his adopted sister.

“What’s your costume?” he asked Sasha. She was wearing what looked to be a burlap bag with holes cut out for her limbs.

“I’m a baked potato,” Sasha mumbled with her mouth full. Then she started giggling uncontrollably as Annie rolled her eyes. “Get it?” Sasha laughed. “Baked. Potato.”

The befuddled look on Eren’s face prompted Armin to offer a clarification. “She’s toasted, Eren. Like, completely stoned. Baked.”

“Ohhhh. Sweet.” This was good, because Eren was feeling horny as usual and he’d heard that girls were easy if they were drunk or high, and he found the idea of being with an ‘older woman’ so very exciting, so... “Hey, Sasha, would you like to feel my muscles?” He flexed a falsely pumped bicep, which only made Sasha laugh even harder.

Annie looked ready to die from sheer lack of respect for the male sex of the species. “How do you live with him?” she asked Mikasa.

“He can’t help it,” Mikasa replied with a shrug. “I beat him, but it makes no difference.”

The two girls looked at each other, admiring each other’s outfits, and then Armin, ever observant and helpful, reached into the pocket of his white apron and pulled out a small plastic bag. “Anyone like some E?”

Annie leaned over and scanned the selection in Armin’s hand. “Wanna split a purple one?” she asked Mikasa. “There’s a sofa down in the rec room in the basement.”

For a split second, Mikasa was confused. Annie had never been particularly friendly to her as a teammate, but she was an impressive athlete and Mikasa respected her abilities on the field. The idea that she might be offering her friendship was titillating. “Sure. I’ll grab a beer out of the fridge.”

“How about you two?” Armin asked, turning to Eren and Sasha.

“E just makes me really thirsty,” Sasha warbled. “I prefer weed.”

Eren just shook his head. “Nah. I don’t need any extra incentive.”

“Suit yourselves,” Armin said. He watched Mikasa and Annie disappear down the basement stairs, and then Eren followed Sasha outside, ostensibly to smoke some weed with her and try to get some action. As they left, Reiner stumbled past them into the kitchen through the back door. He was wearing a soldier's camouflage outfit and holding a bottle of beer in his hand, his face flushed from alcohol. He took one look at Armin and stopped in his tracks. “Whooaa...”

Armin removed one pill from the the bag and popped it into his mouth and downed it with a neat sip of beer from Reiner’s bottle. “Why don’t you show me your room, you big dumb motherfucker?”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two virgins get it on.

It took a lot to rock Armin’s world because Armin’s world was almost pure fantasy and there wasn’t much in the _real_ world that could compete with his fantasy world, a world populated by two-dimensional teen girls sporting double D breasts and sparkling snake eyes and luxuriant hair in electric shades of pink and blue and purple. It was borderline pedo-porn-on-acid but way better. Ordinary porn didn’t feature numerous tentacles going in and out of various orifices and if there was one thing Armin got off on, it was tentacles…and orifices. He drifted to sleep each night hugging his Miia body pillow after humping it to completion, always careful to cum into a tissue because his grandfather only let him do the laundry once a week.

“Stop wasting water!” the old man would lecture. “It ain’t free!”

So it was with giddy anticipation that Armin followed Reiner up the stairs and down the second floor hallway, hoping to get a load of some tentacles and orifices in his bedroom but, alas, no. There was nothing even remotely provocative on view: no posters or figurines of scantily-clad anime goddesses like he had on display in his own bedroom to aid in jacking off, nothing but a boring set of free weights and a padded bench set up in one corner, a neatly-made bed in the other, a dresser, and a desk with a laptop.

“I can’t possibly lose my virginity in a room like this!” Armin declared with disdain. “Where’s the excitement? The porny atmosphere? The _je ne sais quoi_?”

Reiner wasn’t bombed but he was definitely lost. “The _what_? Listen, I thought you could just maybe…I dunno…suck my dick or something.”

Armin crossed his arms over his flat-as-a-board chest and sneered, “Oh, you’d like that, wouldn’t you? And to think I went through the trouble of wearing something sexier than my Sailor Moon outfit for a stupid gorilla like you!”

There was an awkward silence as Reiner contemplated whether he should go back outside to the party and get wasted by the bonfire. Then he gathered his wits and soldiered on. “So, uh, do you wanna suck my dick or not?” He stood blocking the door in case Armin made a mad dash for freedom. The truth was, Armin looked awfully cute, perhaps downright sexy in that French maid’s outfit and Reiner’s cock was rock hard in his pants. His boner kind of overrode the questions floating around in his head, like: who the hell was Sailor Moon and should he care that Armin wasn’t even a real girl? Armin’s mouth looked perfectly capable of doing the deed. Reiner was never one to dilly-dally or overthink things, so he locked his bedroom door and unzipped his trousers. Perhaps Armin’s reticence was just a mark of his inexperience. He was a freshman after all and maybe he needed an older boy to show him the way. Yeah. Reiner would show him the way. “Come here, you little slut. I’ve got something for you.” Reiner whipped out his dick and grinned like a fool. “Do you know what this is? This is a _man’s_ cock. And you’re gonna put it in your mouth and worship me like the god that I am." 

A few seconds elapsed, and then Armin burst into hysterical laughter, doubled over and clutching at his gut, practically in tears. “You’re…you’re a virgin, too! Oh god, I’m gonna pee my panties.”

“I am so NOT a virgin!” snarled Reiner, but the sheen of sweat breaking out all over his body and his rapidly reddening face said otherwise. “I’ve fucked plenty of girls! They can’t get enough of my cock!”

“Yeah, in your dreams,” Armin smirked back. “So your right hand is named Krista and your left hand is named Annie, am I right? Let me see them. I’ll bet they’re all hairy.”

Jesus Christ. There was no way in hell Reiner could launch a verbal counterattack against…the truth. Well, fuck it! He might not be the brightest bulb like Armin, but he was big and brawny and those fishnet stockings gracing Armin’s legs were just asking to be caressed, and then ripped to shreds by his huge, clumsy paws. “Grrrr.” Holy shit. Did that feral growl come from his throat?

What happened next would be replayed in Reiner’s head repeatedly in the days to come, replayed like some magical, imaginary tackle made on the field where he had flattened the entire defensive line so Annie could take the ball all the way to the end zone. Only, Annie wasn’t in the picture. It was Armin, little Armin, writhing beneath him on the bed as Reiner kissed into his hot wet mouth, their tongues darting in and out, lips crashing and mashing together, hips bumping and grinding. So. Fucking. Good. When Reiner reached between them and pulled Armin’s tiny black skirt up, he felt a pair of lacy undies beneath the stockings, and then something rigid and…tubular. Armin was no girl. He was most definitely a boy. The most beautiful boy in the world.

That night Armin gave him what was to be the first of many amazing blowjobs to follow. The boy could suck like an industrial-strength vacuum cleaner and, after Reiner figured out that Armin liked for him to finish rough and dirty all over his face, he was more than happy to oblige. All the bitter disappointment he had swallowed after being rejected by Krista and Annie was gone, as gone as the cum Armin lapped up like an eager puppy. As their secret trysts continued that fall, Reiner discovered that there were other things that Armin liked besides performing fellatio: he liked to be restrained in some way, be it a belt around his ankles or thighs, or a rope wrapped around his wrists; he liked to be pushed against a wall or pinned to the floor; he liked to have his hair pulled just a little too hard; and he liked to be spanked. At times, Reiner couldn’t help but think that he had died and gone to some heaven reserved for perverts. They even made a how-to-suck-dick video together at Armin’s prompting; the thing garnered 10,000+ views in less than a week! And over 3000+ likes! At school Reiner continued to bully him because that’s what Armin demanded. It was all a part of some nutty game, the very public abuse serving as a spark to their private bonfires. It was so sick and oh so exciting, especially with Bertolt looking on like the clueless dolt that he was.

***

“Slap me harder, you pussy!” They were upstairs in Armin’s bedroom while his grandfather dozed in front of the television in the den. The old man never entered Armin’s X-rated bedroom because he couldn’t make it up the stairs, never even knew what his own grandson was ordering on Amazon, a good thing because the old man would have had a heart attack.

“Okay,” Reiner replied. “You asked for it.” He brought the flat of his palm down again onto Armin’s ass cheeks, already pink from the three previous whacks. He could feel Armin’s hard-on rubbing against his own bare thighs as he held him prone over his lap on the bed, Armin’s red lace panties pulled down just enough to expose his adorable, round buttocks. The way they looked right now—lit up and framed so nicely—made Reiner want to take a bite out of them and maybe do that thing that they hadn’t done yet. Yeah. Reiner wanted to play hide-the-sausage with Armin's ass, but he was too conflicted to make a move. Having his dick blown and jacking it onto his face and slapping Armin around was all well and good but, goddamn it, _if only_ Armin had a pussy, his cock would have said “Hello!” to it a long time ago. But Armin didn't have a pussy and Reiner wasn't sure what to do. Of course, he knew all about butt sex. Kinda. He'd heard about it, knew it existed. All the guys joked about it in the locker room but none of them had ever actually done such a thing. He wasn’t into that sort of thing, was he? Of course not. And even if he were, how would he go about it? Was it the same as doing it to a girl? _As if_ he had ever done it with a girl. He laid another firm whack onto Armin's ass and pondered whether he should ask his football coach, Erwin Smith, for some man-to-man advice. Erwin was also the school’s Social Studies teacher and a tough grader, but he was well-liked and a decent guy even though everyone knew he was banging the art teacher, Levi Ackerman. Yeah. He’d broach the subject with Coach Smith. And then he’d make some very pro moves on Armin.

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A day in the life of Levi Ackerman.

Levi took a sip of hot black tea and then carefully set the cup aside. “Okay, go.”

With an enthusiastic grunt, Erwin recommenced pumping his hips in a steady rhythm while he chewed on a piece of buttered toast. The man could multi-task like no other. “Why can’t you just have tea in the faculty lounge?” Erwin suggested around his mouthful of crunchy bread. “It would save us, oh, at least twenty minutes.” They were both pressed for time—having overslept that morning after one too many drinks the night before—and trying to enjoy a quickie during breakfast. 

“What?” Levi scowled at such a sacrilegious idea. He kept his eyes trained on the microwave’s digital clock as he leaned over the kitchen island countertop, on tiptoes as Erwin slid his cock in and out of him from behind. “Use tea bags like some heathen? The only way to make a decent cup of tea is to steep high quality tea leaves in a properly pre-warmed pot. I can’t do that in that shithole of a break room at school." 

Erwin thrust hard and punched a startled yelp out of Levi. “That’s why I stick to good old-fashioned coffee. That new Nespresso machine makes a pretty darn sweet cup of cappuccino. You should give it a try sometime.” He took another noisy bite of toast and then planted a buttery kiss onto Levi’s nape.

“You better not be getting crumbs in my hair,” Levi half-muttered, half-groaned. “Shit, I’m close. Fuck!” He was torn between the need to get to work on time and the desire to keep his ass stuffed as long as possible with Erwin’s thick length.

Erwin leaned his handsome face down again and rumbled low and sexy into Levi’s ear, his blond hair falling forward and tickling Levi’s cheek, “Do you want to cum now or keep going?”

Goddamn it, why did Erwin always have to wreck him with that manly voice of his? “One more minute,” Levi moaned, staring at the clock like it was the mortal enemy of mankind. “Just one…more…minute…ahh…yeah…fuck me…”

***

He was eight minutes late getting to class. Levi hated lateness of any sort but his wonderfully sore and satisfied hole was worth the violation against punctuality.

“Okay, bitches and bros,” he announced as he strode in looking fucked out and abuzz with post-coital endorphins, “let’s see how badly you can make my eyes bleed today.”

None of the other teachers, except the gym teachers—Keith Shadis, a sadistic, ex-army bastard, and Dot Pixis, a confirmed alcoholic with a reputation for being way too handsy with the girls—dared to swear or make offensive remarks in front of the students, but Levi didn’t censor himself because the only kids taking art class as their free elective were stoners like himself, sexual deviants like himself, and moronic posers like Jean Kirstein. Jean, whose parents were French nationals, was Levi’s favorite subject for psychological abuse for numerous reasons—his horse face, his pretentiousness, that ridiculous black vest, the way he flirted with Mikasa when she wouldn’t even give him the time of day, his clueless belief that he was straight—but Jean being French would have been reason enough. Levi suffered no remorse over the blatant cruelty he leveled against Jean because he had French blood running through his own veins and therefore had every right to rip into his own kind. Plus, Jean had thick skin and an even thicker skull. Most of Levi’s barbed comments just bounced right off of Jean like poorly thrown darts. So fucking irritating! 

Politically incorrect language aside, “Okay, bitches and bros, let’s see how badly you can make my eyes bleed today” was Levi’s standard greeting on a critique day, and today the portraiture assignment was due, the mother of all assignments because the finished products were almost always monstrosities of overblown egotism on crystal meth.

“Now remember,” Levi reminded them, “the assignment was for a portrait drawing done in graphite on paper. I didn’t specify _self_ -portrait. So…” he sighed and paused for dramatic effect, “…how many of you Rembrandt wannabes created a self-portrait?” Three-quarters of the class raised their hands.  “How many of you jackasses created a _nude_ self-portrait?” Three-quarters of the class raised their hands. “Lucky me, I get to see dicks and tits all over the place,” Levi muttered miserably. Jean waved his hand in the air. “What is it now, Monsieur Kirstein?”

“I did _not_ do a self-portrait,” Jean stated proudly.

“Well I’ll be damned, there _is_ a god.”

“But it _is_ a _nude_ ,” Jean explained. He turned to flash Mikasa a cheesy smile.

“Thank you for that unwarranted comment.” Levi felt a migraine coming on and they hadn’t even looked at the work yet. “Alright-y then, everyone. Slap your shit up there and let the bloodbath begin.”

While his students set about tacking up their sheets of 18 x 24-inch Strathmore 400 Series drawing paper, Levi wandered over to the doorway and gazed longingly to his left. The science classrooms were across the hall and he could hear his colleague Hange Zoë giving a lecture to the juniors in her Organic Chemistry class. In another forty minutes, the first period would end and he could mosey on over to the little supply room behind her lab where they could share a few hits of weed on the bong she had constructed out of a test tube. The science rooms were all specially ventilated to draw out the fumes from the various chemicals used and it was the perfect place for an extracurricular activity like getting high. A soft rasping sound made Levi turn to his right. Mike Zacharias, the school’s janitor, was zipping down the hallway pushing a dust mop along the floor. Mike was also one of the cooks who worked in the cafeteria dishing out macaroni and cheese during lunchtime. And he was Hange’s live-in boyfriend. The two of them, Mike and Hange, had set up the basement of her house as a weed farm complete with precise temperature and moisture controls, fans and grow lights.

“It’s all in the name of science,” Hange would say. “I’m merely carrying on the legacy of Mendel’s experiments in plant genetics for the benefit of us Homo sapiens.”

At least one day a week, the three of them would congregate for the ten minutes between the first and second class periods and sample a new strain. Sometimes the Earth Science teacher, a Hungarian transplant named Moblit Berner, would join them for a quick toke.

Mike stopped in front of Levi and whispered, “It’s gonna be a good one today.” He took a small plastic bag holding some fat buds out of his back pocket and gave it a deep sniff. “Hange’s calling it _Cannabis sativa_ ‘Wowzi-Powzi’.”

“Can’t wait,” Levi said, “I’m going to need more than a few hits after this class.”

“Critique day?” asked Mike. 

“Yeah, and then I’ve got the Digital Photo class right after. That Eren Jaeger’s in that one and he drives me up the fucking wall. Tell Hange to expect me on the dot.”

With that, Mike gave him the thumbs up and Levi returned to his class. Twelve sheets of paper were now pinned up willy-nilly on the homosote panels and he could see right away that at least one of the drawings was done in color.

“Ms. Blouse,” Levi said calmly, “the instructions were to use graphite. As in a pencil. I’m pretty sure that even _you_ know what a pencil is.” He took a closer look and frowned. “Is this _crayon_? Are you in freaking kindergarten?”

“No, sir, but I really didn’t think I could convey the deliciousness of my portrait with a pencil. Black-and-white wasn't good enough."

The class was quiet, very quiet, because they knew that Levi wasn’t even being critical at this point. Sasha was just the canary in the mine, the guinea pig in what would be a very painful lab experiment.

Levi folded his arms across his chest, an indication that the ball would now start rolling down the hill to crash onto their heads. “A slab of prime rib with a baked potato on a plate is _not_ a portrait, Ms. Blouse. This is called a _still-life_. We went over that, didn’t we? I gave a whole lecture on it last week. Surely you know the difference between a portrait and a still-life?”

“Umm…pretty sure that’s a portrait, sir. It’s a portrait of my ideal dinner.”

The class oohed and aahed in unison, bowled over by both her bravery and her denseness. Connie Springer’s mouth hung open in awe. “My god, Sasha, you are so genius!”

“Ah, Mr. Springer,” Levi intoned gravely, “our very own Otaku Club member par excellence.”

As the school’s art teacher, Levi had been assigned the task of serving as faculty advisor to that club because it was considered to be artsy in nature. The club had been created by Armin and currently boasted five members: Armin, who served as club president; Connie, who served as club secretary; Krista, who shared Armin’s obsession with Sailor Moon; Ymir, who was only in it for Krista’s sake; and a sincere boy named Marco Bott, who was very religious and headed for hell because he was infatuated with Jean and wanted to create his own manga featuring a boy in a vest who falls in love with a priest. Connie was just one step below Armin in dorky weirdness and dedication to all things hentai—be it in anime, manga, or video games—which was saying an awful lot.

“Let me take a guess as to which one is yours,” Levi said, placing his thumb and index finger at his temples like he was some kind of mind reader. It took only two seconds for Levi to spot the drawing, also in color, of an impressively buxom babe in a blue headband wearing a flimsy yellow bikini and licking a cherry red lollipop. Levi tapped the drawing with his knuckles. “Who is this a portrait of, Mr. Springer? Your phantom sister? Your imaginary mother, perhaps? A portrait is supposed to be a likeness of a real person, Mr. Springer, otherwise it’s not a portrait.”

“Uh, yeah, she’s…uh…Rikku and…uh…she’s totally real.”

Levi rubbed his forehead. It was useless to argue with Connie. Levi knew full well that the boy was a Final Fantasy addict. God knows, he’d heard Connie talking about each and every female character in that game during those club meetings he’d had to oversee, so he knew it was a lost cause. Rikku was _real_ to Connie. With a deep sigh of resignation, Levi looked back to the wall and his eyes nearly fell out of his head. What he saw made his heart stop in his chest, his ears light on fire: it was a beautifully rendered drawing of himself standing with his arms crossed, his head turned to the side and…he was naked.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anyone gets the wrong notion, let me say that I love all things French. I mean it. Seriously. I hope to die there...in France...somewhere...anywhere.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mikasa punches the crap out of Jean. Then she realizes something about herself.

Levi’s face was red, but Mikasa’s was even redder and not because she was the culprit behind the Hot Teacher portrait. It was indeed her handiwork, but her furious indignation stemmed from the equally revealing nude portrait of herself on display, a drawing that was obviously inspired by Gustave Courbet’s painting, _L’Origine du monde_ , an infamous ‘portrait’ of a woman’s genitalia. Levi had shown the work in his lecture on portraits the other week and Jean had shamelessly decided to create his own version with Mikasa as his model. Only, Jean hadn’t asked Mikasa to pose; he had merely let his own prurient imagination run wild regarding her pussy and, while the woman’s face was not visible in Courbet’s painting, Mikasa’s face was most definitely portrayed in loving detail in Jean’s drawing.

Without a word, Mikasa walked over to Jean and punched him repeatedly. No one made a move to stop her. Minutes passed before Levi tired of Jean’s pathetic cries for help and said with frustration, “My god, now my _ears_ are bleeding. Ms. Ackerman, please take your seat and we’ll call it even. I won’t fault you for eye-raping me in your portrait if you forgive Jean for the same offense.”

“I drew you from life at least!” Mikasa protested. She punched Jean again with all her might to impress the point upon Levi. “You really do stand like that! I just omitted the clothes! Jean’s never even seen me lying down like that with my legs all spread open like some cheap ho!”

“That’s not true!” Jean retorted behind the sketchpad he was holding in front of his face as a shield. “I saw the pictures from the Halloween party and you were lying down just like that!”

“ _What_?” Mikasa froze, in a panic suddenly as her mind raced like a hamster in a wheel. The party? That was almost two weeks ago. When had she…she dropped her fists and slowly, silently walked to her seat and sat down. Fucking hell. From somewhere far away she could hear Levi talking evenly as he resumed the critique, but it was like hearing vague sounds underwater. What had she done at the party? Annie. The basement. They had sat on the sofa and shared some E, drank some beer, chatted about football…Bertolt was playing pool with some of the other sophomore guys just a few feet away. He kept shooting them shy glances and Annie was giving him the finger. They had laughed about Bertolt’s unrequited crush on Annie and then Annie had suggested to Mikasa that they make out just to tease him. It had seemed like a harmless joke.

“Yeah, why not?” Mikasa had giggled. The E was kicking in and mixing with the buzz from the beer and she was feeling pleasantly horny. So they had kissed and it had felt really, really good, way better than she thought it would since it was with a girl. Annie was aggressive, taking the lead and even fondling her tits. It was all for show, of course, but still undeniably arousing, even flattering that Annie would lavish this kind of attention on a freshman. Mikasa didn’t give a shit about the boys in the room with them; all she cared about was the softness of Annie’s lips, the light but solid weight of her body on top of hers, the musty smell of the sofa as she was pressed back against the cushions, the warm touch of Annie’s hands on her thighs. So good. Bertolt must have taken some shots of them on his phone and shared them with god knows how many other boys at school. Jean must have seen them. Goddamn them. Fuck them all. Only, she didn’t regret kissing Annie. The whole time she was playing tag with Annie’s tongue, she had just one thought on her mind: more.

Even now, as humiliated as she felt with her fantasy vagina on display thanks to that dipshit Jean, she knew she would have done it all over again. _Wanted_ to do it all over again. Mikasa looked up. Levi was asking another student if his mother had dropped him on his head when he was an infant and she was so grateful that Levi had the forbearance to let her indiscretion pass. She had meant the nude portrait of him to be a love letter of sorts, to show him how she saw him in her heart—naked and impassive and so very HOT—but now she realized the stupidity and rudeness of her actions. She had made a colossal error in judgment, crossed the line in the same way that Jean had crossed the line with her. It was unforgiveable, but Levi had chosen to overlook her dreadful blunder and she loved him all the more, loved him for being the kind of man she could admire and respect, and for showing her where her real desires should and could find satisfaction…in Annie.

***

Erwin had agreed to teach Sex Ed that semester to earn a little extra Christmas cash. He wanted to surprise Levi with a ceiling-mounted ‘swing’ for ‘adult’ activities and two nights at a posh resort by the ocean. Teaching a bunch of sophomore boys how to roll on a condom was easy enough. If Hange could do the same in front of the girls, then he could manage it, too. What he wasn’t ready for were the asinine questions: “Can a girl get pregnant if she swallows?” “How do I know where to stick it exactly?” “Can we still do it if she’s on the rag?” “Do girls ejaculate?” “Which hole does a baby come out of?”

“Jesus Christ! Just Google it!” Erwin was usually unflappable, but even he was dismayed by the abject ignorance coming right at him at light speed. The most surprising query came from Reiner Braun, who was a very good center on the football team but not known for his IQ.

“So, uh, Coach Smith, let’s say a girl wants to do it, like, _not_ in her pussy, you know, like, she wants you to come in through the, uh, backdoor. What’s the best position: doggy-style or missionary?”

Erwin took a moment to give the question some thought and then he asked Reiner, “Is this a hypothetical question or is this something that a girl has asked you to do in real life?”

“Oh, I dunno, real life I guess.”

The guys started hooting and high-fiving and fist-bumping all around Reiner, who now wore a smug grin.

“Well then, if she’s never done it before, I suggest that you let her ride you. That way, she’s in control and you’re just there for her pleasure.”

More hooting erupted in the classroom. Reiner’s grin faded just a little.

“Uh, when you say _ride_ , you mean…”

“I mean she’s sitting on top and you’re just the horse she’s getting off on, comprende?” Erwin deadpanned.

Now there were random shouts of “horse dick!” flying through the air and Reiner’s grin was back to full-on smugness.

Erwin glanced at the clock. Just twenty more minutes of this nonsense and then he could head over to his office to book that hotel package before going to his second period Social Studies class. He would be lecturing on the strategic mistakes the Germans made in Russia during World War II, one of his favorite topics. As he pulled a cucumber out of a plastic bag to begin his how-to-roll-on-a-rubber demonstration, he wondered vaguely how Levi was faring in his art class. Surely better than this.

***

“What happened to your face?” asked Marco. He set his lunch tray down and slid in next to Jean, who was gingerly caressing a bruised cheek. 

“Mikasa actually touched me this morning in art class. She touched me, like, fifty times!” Jean took a happy sip of cola. “I’m never washing my face again.”

Marco peered closer, his forehead wrinkled with concern. “Did she ‘touch’ you with her fist?”

“So what if she did?” Jean shot back defensively. “It was still skin-on-skin contact. It was practically step one to having sex.”

“That’s…I don’t think getting punched qualifies as foreplay.”

“What would _you_ know about foreplay? You want to be a freaking priest!” Jean took a bite out of his burger and groaned, rubbing his sore jaw. “Ow.”

It was a legitimate accusation. Marco did plan on going to seminary school after high school, but until he took his vow of chastity and was ordained, there was no reason he couldn’t do the nasty. With Jean, hopefully. Marco stole a surreptitious glance as Jean absently dipped a French fry into some ketchup. Jean was so cute in that black vest of his; it really accentuated his slim waist. They had gym class together after lunch and Marco imagined himself unbuttoning that vest for him, then running his palms across Jean’s hard pecs and abs. He sighed forlornly and took a bite of his pizza. It was getting more and more difficult _not_ to pop a boner around him. He’d definitely have to jack it in one of toilet stalls before he hit the locker room. Otherwise, Jean might notice the offending bulge in his pants and pull a Mikasa on him, which might not be all that terrible. Foreplay, indeed.

Marco had wanted very badly to ask some questions during Sex Ed earlier that morning, but he had been too shy and embarrassed. Luckily, Reiner had opened his big mouth and asked the question for him in a roundabout way. Coach Smith had talked about going slow and using lots of lube and what kinds of condoms were available. Then he had passed out a bunch of condoms for inspection and the boys had immediately ripped open the packets and shot them at each other like rubber bands. Still, what Reiner and Coach Smith had said had gotten Marco thinking…and yearning. There was so much he wanted to experience with Jean! He just had to convince Jean somehow that he, Marco Bott, could give him everything Mikasa would not ever give him in a million years.

 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Marco takes things into his own hands, literally, with Reiner's unexpected help. Mikasa considers the possibility of a deeper connection with Annie.

All the guys gave each other nicknames because guys were just assholes that way and, once a nickname was given, it pretty much stuck for the entirety of a boy’s high school prison sentence. The girls would refer to other girls as “that bitch” or “that skanky ho” or by some other lame term requiring little to no imagination, but the guys put a lot of thought into this sort of thing. On very rare occasions, a nickname could change. For example, Reiner’s nickname became Mr. Ed after the horse dick incident in Sex Ed. His nickname used to be Dr. Zaius, an ironic nod to the brilliant orangutan in the movie _Planet of the Apes_ , but now it was Mr. Ed and he was very happy with it. As far as Reiner was concerned, a man should be proud of his horse dick if one were lucky enough to be blessed with one, and now everybody thought he had one. Hurray!

Bertolt’s nickname was Lurch, after the tall butler of few words in the old television show _The Addams Family_ , Connie’s was Melonious Monk, Jean’s was Horse Face, Eren’s was Dickless Wonder, Armin’s was WTF?, and Marco’s was Domino. Marco had assumed that the guys called him Domino because he only ever ate pizza for lunch in the cafeteria, but later on he realized that the nickname was given on account of the freckles that dotted his face like the pips on a domino tile. Whatever. He thought his freckles looked rather attractive even if the guys made fun of him for it. At least he wasn’t a ginger; that would have been the worst! They would have called him Cheetos or Balls o’ Fire for sure.

It was now fifth period gym class and Marco quickly changed at his locker and tried not to stare across the room at Jean, who was taking his sweet ole time stepping out of his tight jeans. Gosh. Marco couldn’t help but notice that Jean was wearing white briefs today instead of his usual black ones, and that detail alone was enough to get him hard again. Shit. Marco was already in his gym shorts. There was no hiding anything behind that flimsy material so he shuffled as nonchalantly as possible to the bathroom in the back and locked himself in the last toilet stall, took his plumping cock in his hand and prayed that no one would walk in for the next five minutes. It took only seconds of picturing Jean’s ass cheeks filling out those white briefs for Marco to stiffen fully and then it was just pedal to the metal as he leaned his back against the door and fapped like a madman. He was almost there when he heard a loud clearing of throat. Marco froze, his hand still, as he listened to a stream of piss hitting the porcelain urinal outside his stall. Oh god, please, please, please…

A deep, threatening voice reverberated against the tiled walls of the lavatory. “That you in there, Bott? What are you jacking it to this time?”

Goddamn it to hell! It was Keith Shadis, that three-headed demon dog loosed from Hades. Why couldn’t it be Dot Pixis who needed to take a leak now of all times? Pixis was just a sweet old foul-mouthed drunk, but Shadis ate little girls and boys for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Marco didn’t want to be anyone’s meal, unless it was Jean interested in taking a nibble on his very willing body. God help him, he was so dead. And then, like a big dumb angel come down from heaven to stay the hand of execution, he heard Reiner’s loose drawl echoing into the room, sneakers squeaking against the floor.

“Somebody say something about jacking it? How’s it going, teach?” Reiner lifted a fist in greeting.

“Don’t touch me, you moron.” Shadis gave his cock a quick shake and tucked himself in. “God only knows where your hand’s been.”

“Heh,” chuckled Reiner as he sidled over to the next urinal, “all over someone blond and pretty, I can tell you that.” Everyone knew about his crush on Krista and Reiner saw no reason to change people’s perceptions. Plus, he wasn’t exactly lying either about having his hands on someone blond and pretty.

Shadis glared into the cracked mirror over the sink as he washed his hands and growled, “You kids are a seething hive of horny perverts.” He tore off a sheet of paper towel and wiped his hands with vicious intent. “Don’t take too long choking your chicken, Master Bater. Class starts in five.”

“No worries, teach. It’s always ‘go time’ for me.” As soon as Shadis left the room, Reiner finished up at the urinal and then knocked on the stall door. “Hey, Domino. It’s safe to come out now.”

Surprisingly enough, despite the fear and anxiety, Marco was still hard and his erection wasn’t interested in making a polite exit. “Um…I just need a few—” 

“Holy fuck, you really are jacking it in there? Okay, then.” Reiner slammed his fist into the stall door and offered the following encouragement in male solidarity, “Pound Town, baby!”

Five minutes later, Marco was standing in formation on the gym floor, red-faced beneath his freckles as Shadis took attendance. Through his post-orgasmic haze, Marco noticed that Reiner was staring across the room to the other side of the gym, where the freshmen were lined up as Dot Pixis called out their names to shouts of “Here!” Marco could see Krista standing next to Ymir and Mikasa, but Reiner wasn’t looking at the neat grouping of girls. He was looking over at where the boys were gathered in disorderly fashion, at the one boy who wasn’t paying any attention to Eren and Jean elbowing and shoving at each other, at the one boy who was staring right back at Reiner, someone blond and pretty. Armin. Marco’s heart skipped a few beats. WTF? and Mr. Ed? If Reiner was putting his hands all over Armin, then surely he, Marco Bott, could manage to do the same to Jean. Maybe it was all a sign from God. Didn’t Reiner just save him from a sure pummeling at the hands of Keith Shadis? Was Reiner really some angel sent to show him the way to the Promised Land? Oh, Sweet Jesus! Four-thirty couldn’t roll around fast enough. The Otaku Club was meeting in the art classroom later that afternoon and, boy oh boy, he couldn’t wait to talk to Armin. 

*** 

On the other side of the gym, Mikasa was being far more discreet than Reiner, who was ogling Armin like he was a juicy ripe peach. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Annie lined up with Sasha and the other sophomore girls. Sasha was reaching into the pocket of her gym shorts for some kind of snack, but Annie was standing still and ramrod straight, her white knee-high gym socks wrapping tightly around her calves. They looked like perfect bowling pins. Oh god, when had she become obsessed with Annie? She was in love with Levi, wasn’t she? Yes, but…was it possible to be in love with two people at the same time? That must be it. It was just like in that old timey song her grandfather used to sing while he was working on his jigsaw puzzles, “ _Torn between two lovers, feeling like a fool, loving both of you is breaking all the rules_ …” 

Mikasa had never been one to break any rules. She’d always been a good girl, a responsible girl, a well-mannered girl. None of it had prevented the deaths of her parents in a horrific home invasion gone wrong when she was barely nine years old, and now she was fifteen, in love with a man who could be her father’s age, who shared her father’s last name. Was that breaking a rule? Did she have a daddy kink? She looked across the gym again, but this time she was met with Annie’s steady gaze. Holy shit. Annie was looking back at her. Had Annie caught her stealing glances before? Fuck. And then, a small smile crept across Annie’s lips. Most people would have called it a smirk, but to Mikasa, it was a smile, a smile that said, “Come to me, girl.” Mikasa held Annie’s gaze for another second and then she had to look away. This was all so confusing. Ever since the makeout session at Reiner’s party, she had seen Annie numerous times at school and during after-school football practice and drills. They had played a game and won and nothing had been awkward or strange. Neither one had mentioned what they had done except to say that the boys watching them had been such losers. But now, ever since that disastrous critique during first period art class, something had changed, shifted inside Mikasa, like a door opening and she was seeing Annie on the other side as clearly as she was seeing her across the gym. Mikasa dared to look over again. Roll-call had concluded but Annie was still staring back at her with that same barely-there smile. Dot Pixis was now ordering the freshmen to form teams. They would be playing indoor volleyball and as they broke into groups, she couldn’t help but notice Ymir taking Krista’s hand. Those two. They didn’t even try to hide it, the fact that they were _together_. It could happen, right? If it could happen for Ymir and Krista, it could happen for her and Annie, too? Soft lips, fingers ghosting across her thighs. Yeah. More.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren thinks his life blows. It does.

“What the fuck, Mom!” Eren closed the browser window in a hurry. “Quit spying on me!” He sat hunched over his laptop at his desk while his mother Carla set the laundry basket down on his bed. This was so unfair. His father Grisha had removed the lock on his door ages ago in an overt attack on his privacy, yet Mikasa was allowed to keep her lock. At least the bathroom still had a lock or else his balls would have exploded a thousand times over by now.

“Watch your mouth, Eren. And I'm not spying. You think I need to spy to know you’re looking at porn?” The crumpled wads of damp Kleenex scattered at his feet gave it away.

Eren swiveled around in his chair to face her, his green eyes flashing with furious accusation. “That Mikasa! That goody two-shoes, tattle-tale bitch has been running her big fat mouth again! I’m gonna make her sorry!”

Carla opened the dresser drawer and put away a neatly folded stack of Eren’s underwear. “Mikasa didn’t say a word and don’t you dare call your sister a bitch or _I’ll_ tell on _you_ and then you’ll be the one who’s sorry.” She sighed with the kind of long-suffering patience that only mothers possessed, then opened up his sock drawer, where she knew he hid his cum-soiled briefs. Her son was a dunce and a hopeless, hot-headed brat. If she hadn’t actually given birth to him she wouldn’t have believed that he was hers.

“She’s NOT my sister!” insisted Eren. “If Dad hadn’t tried winning some Humanitarian of the Year award, my life would be so much better!” He turned back to his laptop and pulled up an innocuous Word document. “Stop bugging me. I’ve gotta finish a report for my stupid English class.” He typed a few random letters on his keyboard, fuming.

His Digital Photo class earlier that day had been a disaster. The project had been to create a photo essay on self-image and Eren was stoked because, for once, he knew how to solve for the equation. He had worked so hard to superimpose his head seamlessly onto the ripped bodies of his favorite athletes, but his snarky and strangely attractive teacher, Levi Ackerman, had collapsed onto the floor in hysterics when he saw Eren’s presentation. Marco had been ready to run to the school nurse for help—Levi had tears streaming down his face and that couldn’t bode well—but then Mike the janitor had wandered in, having heard the commotion, and calmly slapped Levi back to the land of the relatively sane.

“It appears that Eren’s art has given Mr. Ackerman a seizure,” Armin told Mike.

Luckily, Mike was a bit of an amateur photographer himself—specializing in weddings and nudes—and he conducted the rest of the critique while Levi sat at his desk grinning over some private joke. Eren had felt devastated. How was his work any worse than Marco’s? Marco had taken a bunch of selfies showing himself kneeling in prayer or leaning against a wall looking pensive and virginal. For some reason, Jean was always in the background photobombing the shit out of those pictures and Marco hadn’t even tried to Photoshop Jean out of them. To Eren’s amazement, Levi had told Marco, “Good work.” Good work? Was his teacher stoned out of his head or what?

And then there was Armin’s photo essay. Armin’s grandfather was going to have a shitfit for sure over his next credit card bill because Armin had obviously gone nuts shopping on Amazon again. He had photographed himself modeling ten different cosplay outfits complete with wigs, kitten ears, elf ears, pixie ears, hair bows, stockings, thigh-high boots, platform pumps, leather, lace, you name it! Levi had praised Armin for being “courageous” and “convincing” and for letting his inner voice out. The entire class had nodded in agreement, especially the girls. In fact, the girls were all over Armin like bees on a lavender bush and ignoring Eren completely. How could this be? Why was his life all upside down like this? Why weren’t they hot for his gorgeous face atop those muscular bods?

“Hey, Mom,” Eren mumbled. He had only written twenty-five nonsensical words in what would have to be a three thousand-word essay on George Orwell’s _Animal Farm_. He could already see the D- in red ink.

Carla had finished collecting all the dirty underwear and was now gathering the jeans and shirts and socks Eren had left on the floor. Her son did not believe in using the hamper. “What is it, sweetheart?”

Right outside his bedroom window a squirrel was madly chasing another squirrel up and around the oak tree in the backyard. Even the squirrels were getting more action than him, for crying out loud. The whole world was mocking him, just as Sasha had when he had tried to cop a feel at Reiner's party. She had been high as a kite and _still_ wouldn't let him get to first base, much less second or third. “How do I get someone to have sex with me? I mean a girl. How do I get a girl to have sex with me?” The truth was, he would have settled for anything male or female, as long as it was humanoid, but he didn’t need his mother to know that.

Carla bit into her fist to keep from laughing. God, he was too much. “Well, honey, I think you need to be a little realistic. Maybe talk to a girl first.”

“I talk to them all the time!” Eren insisted. “I’ve asked them for dates and they all turn me down!”

“Oh, really?” Carla wrapped her arms around Eren’s shoulders and kissed his unruly mop of hair. “You’re only fifteen, Eren. I’m sure lots of boys in your class aren’t dating.”

“You’re wrong, Mom. Shit, even that she-male Ymir has a girlfriend, and Ymir doesn’t even have a penis! Even Armin has a boyfriend!”

That was news to Carla. “Armin has a boyfriend?”

“Yeah, but nobody’s supposed to know.”

Hmm. She’d talk to Armin’s grandfather later about this. “Your sister’s not dating anyone.”

“That’s because she’s a total bitch and a loser and she thinks she can get my jerk-off art teacher to fall in love with her. Oh, Mom,” Eren whined loudly, “why won’t anyone go out with me? You think I’m hot, don’t you?”

Now Carla really laughed, it couldn’t be helped. There was no way she could bottle up her amusement. Her son might be naïve and clueless, but he was truly entertaining in a pathetically endearing way. “Yes, baby, you are definitely hot.” She kissed him again and straightened to leave. She needed to start another load of laundry and get dinner going. “I think your father would be the one to give you pointers on girls, though. You should ask him how to snag a girlfriend.” Her husband was a pediatrician who ran a busy family practice. She'd let him handle this one.

Later that night when they were reading in bed, Grisha turned to her and said, “I had a chat with Eren after dinner.”

“Oh, yeah?” God, she could feel the laughter bubbling up inside her again, but she kept a straight face. “What about?”

Grisha put his book down and looked at her with a puzzled expression. “He wanted to know if there were any drugs I could give him to turn him into a chick magnet.”

“A chick magnet?”

“Yes, that’s what he said: a chick magnet.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I’d look into the records.” 

“What records?”

“The hospital records. That kid can’t possibly be ours.”

 


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some truths emerge during an Otaku Club meeting.

Levi’s brain was melting in his skull thanks to the lethal atonal crooning of Kurt Elling. The Otaku Club was in session and it was Connie’s turn to select the music to be played while they worked on their projects and discussed their latest obsessions. Connie was under the delusion that he was some sort of hepcat and was forever trying to ram jazz down everyone’s throat, only he didn’t treat his peers to classic vocalists like Ella Fitzgerald or Dinah Washington. No, it had to be Kurt Elling, a man who specialized in lobotomizing listeners with his off-key singing. This was way worse than Krista playing Taylor Swift or Marco playing Gregorian chants or Armin playing Tokio Hotel. Ymir, whose only real obsession was Krista, would bring her knitting needles and yarn and make everyone listen to Pantera while she added to her collection of handmade socks. Levi liked Ymir, both her attitude and her musical tastes. She was such a bitch. If he had a daughter, it would be her. And if he had a son, he wouldn’t mind having a kid like Armin. The idea that he could have unleashed such outrageous demon spawn onto the world was rather intriguing.

Armin wasn’t like that harebrained Eren Jaeger who had triggered Levi’s uncontrollable fit of giggles during his second period Digital Photo class. That boy’s idiocy was like kryptonite to Levi and Mike probably wouldn’t be able to bail him out of trouble the next time Eren gave him an epileptic seizure. Maybe there was something in that particular _Cannabis_ strain that didn’t sit well with him either. Levi made a mental note to himself: do NOT smoke Hange’s ‘Wowzi-Powzi’ before any class with Jaeger in it. He touched his cheek again; his face felt a little numb for some reason and he still had the munchies even though he had scarfed down a hamburger and fries at lunch and was now opening his second bag of chips as he listened to the conversation buzzing amidst the students. Today’s Otaku Club topic of discussion was whether the PS4 was better than the Xbox One and the debate was as heated and convoluted as usual. At one point, Ymir slammed Connie’s giant forehead onto the desk for being a retard AND a sexist pervert when he called her knitted socks “lesbo dildo cozies.” Ever the diplomat, Armin asked Ymir to knit him a few for his own collection of dildos and then the topic shifted to whether the latest iteration of Grand Theft Auto was worth playing.

“I should get my tubes tied,” Levi muttered under his breath. As much as he thought Erwin would make a fine and upstanding father—Erwin was so mortifyingly DAD to begin with—there was no conscionable reason to add to the shit show called life. Levi exhaled a sigh tinged with bitterness and got up from his desk to stand by the window. From his second floor vantage point he had a clear view onto the football field where the varsity squad was running through practice and drills for the upcoming Friday night game against rival Stohess High School. His grey eyes sought out a blond head of hair atop a tall, muscular frame. Erwin. Next to Erwin stood his assistant coach, Dot Pixis, who was swilling out of a flask and trying to pat Annie’s ass on the sideline when she bent to retie her shoelaces. Levi shook his head and crunched on another salt and vinegar chip. He watched as Bertolt dropped back in the pocket and threw downfield for twenty-five yards. There in a flash to catch the pass was Mikasa, eating up yardage like it was nothing. Her movements were fluid and effortless and it made Levi turn away from the window and go back to his desk, where he was supposed to be grading projects. Right. He had gone through half the stack of drawings from the first period class and was now confronted with Mikasa’s nude portrait of him. It wasn’t bad. In fact, it was disturbingly good. She had even given him an extra inch and taken the trouble of circumcising him. Interesting. Erwin loved the fact that Levi was uncut, said that his body was “pure” and “immaculate” but Mikasa apparently liked her men _sans_ foreskin. Girls. What strange creatures. He gave the drawing another thorough assessment, turned it over and wrote down the grade in red ink: A-. The minus was for his missing foreskin.

Through the portable speakers Kurt Elling was now not-singing, “Steppin’ oouuttt…into the night…into the niiigghhtt,” but before Levi could cover his ears with both hands he heard Marco asking Armin what position was most pleasurable: doggy-style, missionary, or cowboy. Levi almost choked on a chip, but his interest was piqued. That Marco had been pining after Jean was obvious to everyone except Jean. Marco didn’t take a single photo without Jean’s horse face making an appearance, but Jean’s absurd crush on Mikasa told Levi that Monsieur Kirstein was walking around with his own head shoved up his ass instead of Marco’s eager cock. He could only imagine what kind of advice Armin could give him…something really sick most likely. And honest, because Armin only ever did honest.

“Just slip him some E first,” Armin suggested, “to put him in the mood. Then order him to get on his knees and worship your cock with his mouth, make him pray to your cock like a good little penitent sinner.” Armin was concentrating on getting the shading and flashes of lightning just right on a panel for a fan-made doujinshi he was co-authoring with Krista featuring Sailor Moon fighting Gundams and he looked adorable with his tongue sticking out of the corner of his mouth. Levi had to seriously stifle an evil chuckle of approval. “Then,” Armin went on as he carefully worked his eraser, “shove his face into the pillow and drill him nice and good, like you’re Farmer Brown plowing the field in spring.”

Marco gulped a boulder-sized wad of guilty lust down his throat and walked over to Levi. “Sir, I need to use the—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake, Mr. Bott, go take care of business before you cream your pants.”

After Marco disappeared down the hallway, Ymir tapped her knitting needles on the desk to get Armin’s attention. “You know, Armin, you should really stop foisting your own fantasies on Marco. He’s just a stupid virgin, like you Connie. You’re never gonna get laid with that ugly mug of yours.”

“Shut up, Ymir. You should know everything there is to know about ugly. You’re the freaking Queen of Ugly.”

Ymir snorted with disdain. “God, you sound like Jaeger. You two dickheads must be drinking each other’s piss.”

Connie’s eyes bugged out even more than they normally did. “Ew! That is so gross! I wouldn’t do a lesbo thing like that!”

“That’s enough, Mr. Springer,” Levi called out. “Don’t use that kind of language.”

“What language?” Connie protested. “Lesbo? That’s a real word!”

“Just shut your shitty trap and keep it closed,” Levi huffed. “And can you please change the music? Your misguided idea of jazz is giving me a goddamn aneurysm.”

Then Krista’s birdlike voice chirped forth. “Hey Armin, is it true that you and Reiner have gone all the way?”

“Where did you hear that?” asked Armin. He put his pencil down, genuinely curious to know the latest gossip about himself. The truth was, he and Reiner had done all sorts of things but Armin was still waiting for Reiner to get up the nerve to do some plowing in his own field. For all his macho swagger, the dude had balked at _that_.

Krista and Ymir and Connie all looked at each other, and then Krista said, her face pinched in confusion, “Well, Reiner’s been saying it.” 

Ymir nodded. “It’s true. I was standing right there when he told Krista how he thinks about her when he’s banging you. Don’t worry. I punched him in the face for all of us.”

The room fell silent. And then Armin burst into tears.

_________

In case you've never heard Kurt Elling and you think I'm kidding, here he is singing Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" live somewhere. Don't blame me if your ears bleed:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4f1-Enyhds>

And in case you've never listened to one of the world's greatest albums (and Ymir's go-to album for ass-kicking)—Pantera's _Vulgar Display of Power—_ here are the boys performing one of many brilliant tracks, "Mouth for War":

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a3JSbOt7CLo>

 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin is feeling like a sad little chump. Mikasa schools both Eren and Reiner in the most painful ways.

Armin’s grandfather was old as fuck, but that didn’t stop him from being horny for the ladies. When Armin told him that Eren’s mother had invited them both over for dinner on Saturday night, Old Man Arlert wasted no time going into town for a $15 haircut at Trim ‘n Go. He had a coupon. That Carla Jaeger was a sweet love muffin in his book and he was looking forward to flirting shamelessly with her over meatloaf and mashed potatoes. It was the one benefit of being an old geezer: he could get away with wearing pants up to his chest and doing anything else no matter how embarrassing or crass. No one would say a thing, except his weird little grandson.

“Grandpa, I think you’re going overboard on the Aqua Velva.” Armin was watching his grandfather get all gussied up in the downstairs bathroom before they headed on over to the Jaeger residence for dinner. The smell of the aftershave—his grandfather considered it ‘classy’—was overpowering, especially when the old man slapped it generously onto his cheeks, then rubbed it all over his wrinkled neck, under his arms, and across his flabby chest with its uneven patches of straggly white hairs. “I better die young,” Armin thought to himself. He coughed in an attempt to dislodge the cloying taste of the cologne from the back of his throat. Well, that did a whole lotta nothing, so he wiped his tongue on a tissue and resigned himself to the fact that no matter what Mrs. Jaeger served, it was going to taste like Aqua Velva.

He had stayed over for dinner at Eren’s house many times on a school night, but it was unusual for there to be an invitation to a meal on a weekend and with his grandfather tagging along. Whatever. Mrs. Jaeger was a decent enough cook and anything, even a pity meal from Eren’s mother, was better than a typical dinner at home with his grandfather, usually a Hot Pocket or some other frozen ‘food’ heated up in the microwave. He was also glad for the excuse not to spend Saturday night with Reiner up in his bedroom doing things that now made Armin shudder with shame. No, it wasn’t shame. It was hurt, the kind of hurt that blistered and then broke and spilled pus all over the place, left him feeling raw and vulnerable in a way he had never known before. Even when his parents had dumped him off on the old man to go traipsing around the world, he hadn’t felt this kind of anguish, this kind of rejection. It was bad enough that Reiner had been bragging about doing something he hadn’t even had the guts for, but he had admitted that he’d been thinking about Krista all along. All those times Reiner had kissed him, touched him, came hot and wet on his face, he’d been thinking about Krista instead of him.

***

Armin had cried and cried the day of the Otaku Club meeting earlier in the week, his tears ruining the pages of his work-in-progress doujinshi as Krista put her arms around him and caressed his trembling shoulders. What fucking irony. Krista didn’t even want to be the object of Reiner’s fantasies, yet she was still stuck in that stupid jock’s dreams no matter how many times she had told him she didn’t want to marry him. Even Ymir couldn’t stop Reiner from violating Krista in his mind apparently. Good grief!

Levi had made a gallant effort to console Armin but that had turned out to be awkward as all heck for everyone. “Life is full of shitheads doing and saying shitty things,” Levi had philosophized somberly, “and then you die. Alone. After shitting your own pants. Enjoy it while you can.”

Marco, back from his masturbatory session, had offered to pray for Reiner’s destruction. That probably made him a hypocrite because he had thanked God earlier for Reiner’s timely ‘assistance’ in the boy’s locker room but, hey, hypocrisy was just one of the many perks of religion. Connie, meanwhile, had run outside. Football practice was winding down and he caught Mikasa as she was leaving the field with Annie and told her about Armin’s meltdown. Mikasa had followed Connie back inside and then walked Armin home with her. She knew he wouldn’t want his grandfather to see him in such a state and ask unwelcome questions. The old man usually left him to his own devices, but Armin was a wreck.

“I’m gonna beat the crap out of Reiner!” Eren shouted. “I’m gonna shred that motherfucker with my bare hands! I’m gonna give him two black eyes! He’s gonna look like a fucking raccoon when I’m through with him!” They were up in his room, Eren stalking about swinging his fists, punching the air. His book report was not getting finished anytime soon.

Mikasa rolled her eyes at Eren’s vaunting display of macho arrogance, Armin rubbing snot on a sleeve as they both sat on Eren’s bed. “Good luck with that, dumbass. You can’t even reach his face.”

Eren whirled around like a windmill in a hurricane, limbs flailing. “I’ll take out his nuts then!” He demonstrated his deadly abilities with an inaccurate and uncoordinated roundhouse kick that sent his laptop flying into the closet door. It landed with a crack and a thud. “Oh, shit! Mom’s gonna kill me!”

The ruckus brought Carla to the room in two seconds flat. “What the heck is going on in here?” Her gaze fell upon Armin and his teary eyes, his reddened nose and cheeks. “Armin? What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

“Hi, Mrs. Jaeger,” Armin hiccupped. The sight of her made Armin start sobbing all over again. For the first time in years, he desperately wanted his own mother.

“Look what you’ve done now, Mom!” Eren accused, jumping at the opportunity to turn the tables in his favor, at least until he could think of an excuse for his busted laptop. “Why did you have to screw with his head like that?”

“Go downstairs and set the table, young man.” Carla pushed past her scowling son and sat down on the other side of Armin. “There, there, Armin, everything’s going to be just fine. Whatever it is, you can tell me, darling.”

Eren scowled even more. “Gross, Mom! Quit hugging and kissing him like that. That’s totally perv! It’s not like you’re anyone’s idea of a MILF!”

Mikasa got up and grabbed Eren by the arm and pulled him out of the room, dragged him halfway down the stairs and then threw him down the rest. “Don’t talk to your mother like that, you stupid little brat.”

“Ow! Th' fuck? You cunt!”

The slap came so hard and fast, Eren literally saw stars shooting across his field of vision. Then those stars exploded into bursts of red as three more slaps landed on his cheeks before he could throw both arms up to defend himself. Bad move, though, because the next thing he knew, he felt a crushing blow to his groin as Mikasa kneed him squarely, sending him crashing back against the wall and tumbling onto his ass as he doubled over in agonizing, breathtaking pain. He thought he might vomit; he sure as hell was dry-heaving. “You…broke my balls…” Eren squeaked in a High C, gasping, saliva running out of his open mouth onto the floor as he hunched over cupping his crotch, “…I-I’m telling Dad on you…”

“Go ahead,” Mikasa replied, unperturbed. “He’ll thank me for sterilizing you. Someone like you shouldn’t be allowed to procreate.” Then she went into the dining room and set the table. As much as she’d enjoy watching Eren get pummeled by Reiner, she knew that she’d have to take care of Reiner herself, even though it went against the unspoken rule of being teammates. She and Reiner were on the same offensive squad and they were supposed to have each other’s backs, but Armin was her dearest friend—she loved him like a brother, or like a sister more accurately—and Reiner needed some advanced schooling on proper boyfriend etiquette. The Friday night game was four days away, plenty of time for her to come up with a plan.

***

“Yeah, I’m in. We should definitely fuck him up.” Annie felt no equivocation. She wasn’t friends with Armin, but she wasn’t friends with Reiner either, as a teammate, classmate, whatever, it didn’t make a difference to her. The dude was going down and she already knew which parts of his body she was going to tenderize with her kick-punch combo: groin, ribs, solar plexus. “I can save the face for you. You’re taller than me.”

The situation was serious but Mikasa couldn’t stop a giggle from escaping. They were in the locker room suiting up for practice the next day. Coach Smith was running them through drills in full pads that afternoon. She had told Annie about what Reiner had said to Krista about Armin and Annie had readily agreed to help her teach Reiner a few manners. “I don’t want either of us to get suspended,” Mikasa explained as they stripped down to their underwear. There were strict rules about conduct and violations of team rules could lead to not only suspension from the team, but suspension from school. “I thought I’d do something more subtle, something that won’t show on the outside.”

Annie straightened up, puzzled. “Like what? It’s not like he’d admit to getting a beatdown from us anyway. I say we make hamburger meat out of him.”

That elicited another laugh from Mikasa. She was really beginning to savor what felt like some strange kind of bonding between them, even if it was over a dope like Reiner. “Thanks, Annie. I’m…I’m really glad you’re in my corner. I can’t count on Eren to be any help.” 

Now it was Annie’s turn to laugh. “Shit. That fake brother of yours is fucking hopeless.”

“I know, but he’s all I’ve got.” Their eyes met and for a long moment, neither one looked away. The memory of their kiss on the couch in Reiner’s basement was floating through Mikasa’s head suddenly and her gaze shifted to Annie’s pale pink lips. She wanted so badly to feel them on her own again, feel how soft and warm they were. She felt a faint tickle on the bare skin of her belly and realized that Annie was brushing her fingers against her there, then she felt Annie’s other hand come up around the back of her neck, urging her closer. “Annie?”

“Just kiss me, already.” Annie stretched up on her tiptoes and met Mikasa halfway.

“Hmm…” So good. So good. Mikasa’s brain had turned into a broken record, stuck on those two words: so good. She slipped her arms around Annie’s firm, taut body, felt heat and more heat pulsing just below her smooth skin even as they kissed, felt herself falling, falling, falling in love. So good.

***

“Grisha, you’re a lucky man.” Old Man Arlert happily accepted another slice of meatloaf from Carla, his third helping of the night. “Most women don’t even know how to cook anymore. My own sweet darling, god rest her soul…she cooked for me every day, three solid meals…spread her legs nice and wide for me every night, too, like a proper wife.”

“Grandpa!” shrieked a mortified Armin. “Holy hell!” The idea of all that wrinkled flesh slapping against more wrinkled flesh was blowing his mind in the worst way.

“Don’t interrupt your elders, little boy,” chided Old Man Arlert, patting his grandson on the head like he was the family dog. “What’s that saying? ‘Children should be seen but not heard.’ Isn’t that right, Carla?” He winked devilishly at her.

Carla raised her glass of wine and took a very long sip. “That sounds about right, Mr. Arlert.” She decided right then that it would be a bad idea to talk to him about Armin’s worrisome romantic escapades. The boy had enough to deal with as it was and it was beginning to appear that the kid had genetic disadvantages to contend with too.

Old Man Arlert turned his attention back to Grisha, speaking in a low conspiratorial voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Your missus still has a nice rack on her, too. Like I said, you’re a lucky man, Grisha. Very lucky indeed. There’s nothing like a properly cooked meal and some proper fucking with a good woman to keep a man happy, healthy, wealthy and wise. Isn’t that right, Grisha?”

All eyes fell upon Grisha as he arranged his face into a placid mask. “Proper nutrition and…regular physical activity is most definitely recommended,” he demurred. Then he wisely changed the subject because Carla looked ready to throw the bowl of peas at his head. “Mikasa, I heard there was some trouble at your game last night in Stohess. Some boy on your team took ill?"

Mikasa swallowed a lump of mashed potatoes and nodded innocently. “Yes, Dr. Jaeger.”

“Yeah,” laughed Eren. “Reiner shit his pants right during the game, right when he was hiking the ball to Bertolt. It was hilarious! They had to take him to the ER to be treated for explosive diarrhea! It turned out that someone had put a ton of laxatives in his Gatorade bottle.” Eren then proceeded to make some truly offensive and overly descriptive noises mimicking what had transpired on the field of play. 

“That’s it, young man!” Carla stood up and pointed to the stairs. “Go up to your room right now!”

As Eren stomped upstairs roaring with laughter, Mikasa stole a discreet glance at Armin—who was looking at her with a mixture of horror and worry—and then she let slip the tiniest smile of triumph. Armin’s eyes widened with comprehension, his expression settling into relief and gratitude. Then he cheerfully asked for another slice of meatloaf.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I sink to a new low in this chapter? Somebody please stop me! Seriously. This is a trainwreck.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi misses the good old days but Erwin does what Erwin does best.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, it's Super Bowl Sunday in the States so I'm celebrating by uploading an extra-long chapter of Eruri with some sexy times thrown in. Hope you enjoy.

They had a routine. After three years together, Levi was still blissfully tight and Erwin wanted to keep him that way, and that meant pacing themselves. They had sex three times a week normally, although the football schedule in the fall cut in to what had used to be their favorite time for sex: Friday nights. It was the perfect way to unwind after a long and grueling work week—they could go out to dinner, get drunk, then go back home and fuck out all the frustration of dealing with brats from Monday through Friday. Levi was always good and ready for him on Friday nights because his patience with the students was usually gone by midweek.

The game against Stohess High had been a clusterfuck of things-gone-wrong, though, right from the beginning. First, there was the whole confrontation with Nile Dok before the game had even started. Years ago when they had been peers in college, Erwin and Nile had vied for the same woman—a lovely nympho named Marie—and Nile had emerged the winner in that pussy-grab smackdown, but the greedy bastard couldn’t leave it at that. Nile had the gumption to _marry_ Marie and then _breed_ tiny versions of himself (two things Erwin had aspired to do himself for purely egotistical reasons). He discovered that fun fact at their college reunion just four years after finishing graduate school. By then, Nile had two children to show for and a cushy career in administration while Erwin had nothing but a soul-crushing tenure-track position at Trost High School teaching attention deficient brats. Nile, for some ungodly reason, was a vice principal at Stohess High just because he had earned an EdD, the retarded cousin of the PhD in academia. Erwin had earned an MA in Education and stopped at that point when he realized he’d be spending the rest of his life paying off his student loans. Nile coached the Stohess varsity football squad “just for fun,” as Nile put it, and because he wanted to “give back to the community,” not because he needed the extra cash that came from coaching. A vice principal’s salary was at a different pay scale than that of ordinary faculty. Just another reason for Erwin to hate the man.

“You still spending your evenings grading plagiarized essays and filing assessment reports?” Nile asked with a crunching handshake. They stood at the fifty-yard line in the middle of the field as the teams readied themselves on opposite sides. “You should have joined the ranks of the administration when you had the chance.”

“You’re a fucking V.P., Nile. All that means is you get to wipe the Principal’s ass and bend over for the Board of Ed when you’re not groveling for the parents.”

“As a parent myself,” Nile was quick to retort, “I can say I’m on their side.” He examined a fingernail and then raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “Not much chance of that happening for you soon, is there?”

Erwin refused to be baited. He only rued that he had ever been on friendly terms with Nile in college, that he had ever talked to him about his goals for the future, his plans to settle down with Marie and start a family. But that was all water under the bridge and Erwin did not regret where he was now. He was open about his relationship with Levi and damn proud of it. “Some people shouldn’t pass on their genes as a kindness to the rest of humanity.” He let the words sink in with an accompanying glare. “But if Levi and I ever choose to have children, you better hope you’re dead and buried because they will _eat_ you alive. I guarantee it.”

That had merely elicited a chuckle from Nile. “Looking forward to it, Ken Doll. Give your little twink my best.” He turned to leave and then stopped. “Oh, and good luck with the game. I have a feeling we’ve got this one in the pocket.”

As seething mad as he was, Erwin had straightened his face by the time he returned to the visitors’ side of the field and gave his final pre-game pep talk before kick-off. By halftime they were ahead 27-6, and then everything fell apart at the start of the third quarter when Reiner’s guts suddenly exited his body en masse. He rode with Reiner in the ambulance to the emergency room, the game now under the questionable leadership of Dot Pixis, trying to breathe through his mouth as Reiner screamed in agony on the gurney. It was too genuinely terrible to be funny. The bloodwork confirmed what was present in his stomach and bowels: Gatorade and an extreme level of laxatives, not enough to be lethal, but enough to dehydrate him and put him in a fair amount of discomfort. The doctor hooked Reiner up to an IV for fluids and then Erwin called the boy’s parents to come pick him up.

Erwin took a cab back to the game just as it was ending but in time to accuse Nile of foul play. “You underhanded bastard,” Erwin growled into his face. “Marie wasn’t enough for you? You have to poison one of my players now?” 

“What are you talking about?" 

“You said you had this game in the pocket, you cheating son-of-a-bitch. You said it yourself.”

“That’s slander, Erwin,” Nile replied firmly. “I’d be very careful if I were you.”

The tone of Niles’ voice, his demeanor, all of it had a ring of truth to it. Whatever. The guy was a snake. Erwin looked at the scoreboard and muttered under his breath, “Well that’s just fucking perfect.” They had lost, 27-48.

***

“Tch.” Levi was at the end of his rope. He’d been looking forward to getting banged into tomorrow but his plans had seemingly been dashed by some jock shitting his pants during the stupid game. Normally, Erwin was raring to go on Friday nights after a game, but not tonight. Snapping his fingers impatiently at Erwin seemed to have no effect. The man he loved and lusted after continued pacing back and forth in the bedroom after his shower, hair still dripping, gesticulating with swift chops like he wanted to murder the air as he rambled on about Nile and the game and spitting out words like “cheating motherfucker” and “sabotage” and “lowlife grease ball.” Levi tried again, barking this time, “Erwin! Focus! On! My! Un! Plugged! Ass!”

Erwin paused mid-stride, as if coming to his senses, and then slipped right back into his rant. “That’s it, we can’t write the names on the bottles anymore…there has to be a better way to—”

“Oh, if only you could fuck me with _boredom_ , I’d be cumming like Old Faithful right now!” Levi interjected. He got off the bed with a huff and made for the door.

“Where are you going?” asked Erwin, oblivious to anything Levi had said. He was only aware of his one audience member leaving the room. It was then that Erwin noticed that Levi was wearing one of his own shirts, a white dress shirt four sizes too large for Levi’s small frame. It came down to the tops of Levi’s knees practically, the sleeves rolled up and thickly bunched at his elbows. “Aww…hey.” Erwin grabbed Levi by the arm, finally seeing him, the frustration of earlier events draining away at last. “You look so fucking cute wearing my shirt.”

Levi jerked his arm away and hissed, “Cute is for goddamn kittens. And you’re only noticing _now_?”

“Levi, I—”

“You better stop shopping at the Jerk Store, Mr. Smith, or my ass is going to find a new pair of lips to kiss it and make it all better.” He grabbed his pillow and spat out, “I’m sleeping in the guest room. Have fun adding Nile to your spank bank.”

Sleeping alone in the lumpy twin bed in the guest room really sucked and Levi wondered if he’d even be able to fall asleep like this: angry and alone and with his balls all congested, Erwin probably feeling the same way in the master bedroom. Well, damn it, Erwin _better_ feel the same way, thought Levi. He curled up further under the stale covers and wished things could go back to simpler days when it was just him and Erwin getting to know each other and no one else mattered, not Nile or football or even Hange and Mike. It was just Erwin and his sexy, silly ways.

***

_Three Years Ago_

The waiter set their appetizers on the table and chirped “En-joy!” on autopilot before darting away to his next table. The restaurant was running its ‘Endless Apps’ special all month and the place was jammed with people packing thin wallets and empty stomachs hungry for salty, fatty carbs. Levi started up again as soon as their waiter was out of earshot.

“Gay guys don’t go on _dates_ , Erwin. They eat, they drink, they shit, and they fuck, not necessarily in that order. Dating is for _breeders_.” He stared down at his breaded and fried macaroni-and-cheese balls, then over at Erwin’s plate of double-baked potato skins stuffed with cheese and bacon. “Do you want to share?”

Erwin ignored Levi’s sharing suggestion because Erwin was trying to make a point and Levi, as usual, was trying to deflect. Erwin leaned forward so he wouldn’t have to raise his voice to be heard over the noise of the speakers piping in the old ballad _Don’t Stop Believin’_ by Journey. Maybe Levi was right about the whole dating-breeder link. “It’s Friday night, isn’t it? And we’re at an Applebee’s, aren’t we? I’m drinking a beer and you’re having a margarita and we’re about to start off with some appetizers, right? How is this _not_ a date?”

“Tch.” Levi’s face darkened with contempt like a shade pulled down on a sunny window. “Are you going to pay for my meal, too?”

“Of course,” Erwin replied easily. “I wouldn’t think of doing otherwise.”

“Right, because you think paying for my dinner buys you the right to fuck me afterwards.” Levi took a big gulp of his margarita and scrunched his face into a sneer even as he savored the delicious zing of lime and tequila hitting the back of his tongue. He was definitely going to order a couple more, especially if Erwin was footing the bill. “Don’t get all Harlequin Romance-y on me, Mr. Smith. It’s sickening. I can pay for my own meals. I’m living high on the hog on that low five-figure teacher’s salary, remember? And the only reason you get to fuck me afterwards is because I _let_ you.”

With a chuckle, Erwin crossed his muscular arms over his equally muscular chest and relaxed back against the upholstered seat cushion in their booth, unabashedly enjoying how chatty Levi could be with the right mix of anger and alcohol. “I know that,” he said with a smile. “I know you _let_ me because I am such a fantastic lover and you can’t get enough of—” Erwin unfolded his arms and gestured gracefully up and down his own torso, “—all this finery banging that sweet little body of yours.”

No truer words had ever been spoken. As soon as Levi had spotted Erwin at his first Trost High School faculty meeting, he knew he was going to bed all that blond, hunky hotness. It didn’t take much to make Erwin notice him. Levi stood out wherever he went because he was unusually small and youthful in appearance, often mistaken for a teenager and made to show his ID at the liquor store. It was annoying and humiliating to be treated like a child almost and it made all the jagged edges of Levi’s personality even sharper, even more prickly and cutting. Erwin found Levi’s boyish beauty and shitty attitude to be irresistible. Levi was a challenge and Erwin just loved challenges, whether it be 2000-piece jigsaw puzzles or the conundrum that was Levi Ackerman. The day he saw Levi in the teacher’s lounge washing his hands at the sink before lunch break—his firm ass cheeks perfectly delineated in his tight black jeans—was the day Erwin made his move.

“Hey, you’re the new art teacher,” Erwin said, his eyes Super Glued onto Levi’s buttocks like the shameless pervert he was being at the moment. He stuck his hand out and waited for Levi to turn around.

Levi, though, took his time washing up; he wanted to make sure Erwin got a nice eyeful of those round globes. “Yeah,” he mumbled nonchalantly, wiping his hands on a paper towel. “That’s me.” He turned his head slowly to look back over his shoulder, keeping his ass in clear view, and said all sultry-like, “Take a picture, old man, it’ll last longer.”

And that was it, easy as pie; Erwin was hooked. They got it on that very same day in the janitor’s closet. “Don’t worry,” Erwin assured as he yanked Levi’s pants down past his hips, “Mike’s on cafeteria duty right now.” Then he took Levi’s erection into his mouth and sucked him off expertly amidst the shelves of cleaning supplies. Staring at a five-gallon container of Windex while Erwin blew him made Levi cum hard and fast, his hands fisting in Erwin’s hair and making a mess of his perfectly combed and coiffed do. When Erwin stood up panting with a wide grin, hair pointing wildly in all directions, Levi reached out for Erwin’s belt, undid it with a little trepidation because the bulge in Erwin’s trousers was substantial.

“Here, let me…” Erwin unbuttoned and unzipped quickly, impatiently, and freed his boner.

“Oh…shit…” Levi gulped loudly and looked around for somewhere to hide. “That’s…um…quite a monster you’ve got there…”

Erwin gave his cock a loving stroke and said modestly, “I’ve been told that it satisfies.”

“Well…” Levi looked again at the engorged member held in the palm of Erwin’s large hand and estimated that it was a good nine thick inches, “…I’m not sure how much of that I can fit in my mouth…I mean, it’s not every day I’m chowing down on something like _that_.”

“No problem,” Erwin soothed, “I’m okay jerking it. Maybe just put your lips on it and I’ll do the rest.”

Levi exhaled nervously. “Fucking mother of god…” He tucked himself in and pulled up his pants, sat down on a twenty-gallon container of floor wax, and opened his mouth like a baby bird. “How’s that?”

“You’re awfully cute,” smiled Erwin. He rubbed the crown of his cock against Levi’s lips several times along the top and the bottom before Levi sucked the head inside his mouth. “Ahh…” Erwin groaned out a breath when Levi began laving the tip of his tongue across the slit, quick flicks before he took him inside the hot wetness of his mouth and bobbed his head as Erwin pumped the shaft in his fist. To see Levi’s delicate pale lips stretched wide around his cock was bringing him close to orgasm; when Levi looked up and flashed his smoky grey eyes at him, lids and long lashes all aflutter, Erwin lost it, he had merely to give himself a few light twisting pumps of his fist before he was shooting his load. “Ahh…fuck, fuck, fuck…shit, sorry about that. I should have warned you.”

Levi was looking searchingly about the room, a little dazed. His lips were pursed together tightly, as if he were holding something in his mouth, and Erwin assumed rightly that he hadn’t swallowed. He grabbed a large roll of paper towels off a top shelf and ripped off a few sheets. “Here,” he said sheepishly, handing them to Levi who immediately spit out the cum. “I guess I can’t expect you to...that is, we don’t really know each other well enough yet to—” 

“To what?” muttered Levi, wiping his mouth. “As if I would _ever_ swallow.”

Erwin breathed a sigh of relief. “Phew!” he laughed. “At least it wasn’t something personal against me, right? Heh heh.”

Levi stood up and opened the closet door a crack before stepping into the hallway. He spoke low and quiet over his shoulder at Erwin, “Oh, it’s personal alright,” and then he walked to the cafeteria for lunch without glancing back, secretly savoring the lingering taste of Erwin on his tongue.

***

Now, three years later, after Levi had mastered the skill of swallowing without gagging, Erwin seemed more interested in ranting about that stupid Nile Dok than in fucking him. Levi missed those early days, before Erwin had started coaching football to earn extra cash, when they had Friday nights free for silly ‘dates’ at horrible chain restaurants followed by all-night-long, no-holds-barred banging. Levi had never been the romantic type, didn’t like ‘feelings’ to be involved, but what else could he call this hard lump of neediness sitting at the bottom of his stomach? Didn’t that qualify as a feeling? Shit, he hated fucking feelings, every one of them!

There was a knock on the door.

“Idiot,” Levi muttered softly. He buried his head under the covers and waited. Sure enough, in another moment he heard the door creak open on its hinges, and then felt a pronounced dip in the mattress as Erwin crawled underneath the sheets. “Get the fuck away from me.” Levi turned to face the other way but Erwin only scooted closer until he had Levi nestled right against him. Erwin was naked and Levi could feel his erection hot and huge against the heat of his own thighs. “I’m not in the mood anymore, asshole.” It must have come out sounding totally unconvincing because Erwin only chuckled and began unbuttoning the shirt Levi was still wearing.

“Fine,” Erwin whispered into his ear, “I just want my shirt back.” Then he started licking and nibbling at Levi’s nape, his fingers busy with the buttons, then pushing the shirt open and caressing Levi’s chest, working each nipple into an erect nub before ghosting down his belly to tickle at a hip bone, then thread through the dark hairs at his groin. The sighs he was pulling out of Levi made Erwin smile into the kisses he was planting onto the sides of Levi’s face.

“Quit your grinning,” huffed Levi. “Shit, you are such a smug bastard.”

Erwin curled his fingers around Levi’s twitching cock and his smile stretched wider as he felt it plump and fill in his hand. “Hmm…” He ground his own cock harder into Levi's thighs, let it rub up between his ass cheeks, and Levi moaned aloud at the sensation. “Still not in the mood?” 

“God, I hate you…” Levi turned around to face Erwin, his mouth and hands hungry, reaching, biting, clutching.

Erwin took him in his arms, so ready and willing and eager. “I hate you too, my beautiful, perfect kitten.”

 


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin is still pissed so Reiner goes to Coach Smith for some more advice.

Mikasa groaned and threw a grape at Eren, who was busy stuffing tater tots into his mouth—four at a time—and chewing loudly. He looked like a rabid, green-eyed chipmunk. “Ugh. Try a little harder to eat like a fucking _animal_ , Eren,” she commented across the table. “You’re being way too polite.”

Annie, who was sitting next to Mikasa, neatly bit into her turkey sandwich, her icy grey eyes zapping him with imaginary death rays. She reached over and took a sip of Mikasa’s iced tea.

Eren’s face crumpled in disgust. “I’m going through a growth spurt, you stupid bitch. I gotta eat like a _man_ ‘cause I’m gonna _be_ one any minute now. I’m gonna be ten feet taller than you, just you wait and see.” He shot Annie a glare. “And why don’t you just French kiss my sister in front of everyone? You used the same straw as her. That’s gross!”

Both Annie and Mikasa looked at him in surprise. “Oh, I’m your _sister_ now, am I?” asked Mikasa. She had never in a million years thought she’d hear the words 'my sister' vomited from Eren’s mouth. 

“Are you jealous, little boy?” sneered Annie.

Eren stuffed four more tater tots into his mouth and rudely spoke around them. “Why would I be jealous of a lesbo shrimp like you? Besides, Mikasa’s pussy’s all wet for _Mister_ Ackerman. Guess you must like shrimps of both sexes, right, Mikasa?” Just then, Armin’s phone dinged and the distraction was barely enough to prevent her from reaching across the table and punching Eren’s lights out.

Armin’s hot dog remained untouched on his tray as he read the latest text from Reiner. It had been nearly two weeks since his embarrassing sobfest over Reiner’s remark about Krista and he was still feeling hurt and angry to the point of refusing to speak to Reiner. Reiner, who was clueless over what had precipitated Armin’s change of heart, had started sending him what appeared to be love poems. “My god,” mumbled Armin as he looked down at his phone, “it’s like a haiku written by a horny carpenter. Get a load of this gem:

 

_u give me wood, oh_

_if only u would be mine_

_we could strip it good_

 

“What’s a haiku?” asked Eren as Mikasa and Annie burst out laughing. “And why did you ever even like that douchebag? Shit, _I_ can be your boyfriend if you want one so bad. I’m hot, right?” That only prompted more laughter from the girls.

And pity from Armin, who put one hand on Eren’s shoulder, in amazement at his belligerent friend’s uncanny ability to make Reiner appear less dense and more attractive somehow. “Eren, thank you for that offer, but you’re not my type. At all. And, to be honest, I wouldn’t use the word ‘hot’ if I were you. Desperation is NOT sexy.”

***

Reiner spotted that little round blond head across the cafeteria and his stomach clenched just enough to make him wonder if he should make another dash to the bathroom. He had been absolutely paranoid after the game against Stohess High. The game had gone so well in the first half—he had memorized all the plays that Coach Smith had wanted to run and Bertolt had been accurate in his passes but, more importantly, he, Reiner, had been quick off the hike to block. All cylinders were firing and, for some reason, both Annie and Mikasa were shooting him some pretty sweet looks. Yeah. Mikasa had never given him a second glance in the past, never tried to flirt with him, but maybe, just maybe…and perhaps Annie was finally coming around and realizing what a bodacious hunk he was and would finally give him a handjob after the game...maybe they would _both_ go at it at the same time; his dick could certainly handle two loving hands at once. He didn’t hope for or even want a blowjob from either girl, though, because he’d been spoiled by Armin. No one gave better blowjobs than Armin. After halftime, unfortunately, things had flown like a lead balloon. He had been hydrating like normal, drinking his Gatorade like he should, but on the first snap in the third quarter something gave way inside him and, holy fucking shit, he felt his entire guts pour out of him like sewage from a burst pipe. In a way, it had been like a dream...or…more like a nightmare. He was crouching at the line of scrimmage and then, another second later, he was…

He was beyond feeling any shame as he rode in the ambulance. How he even found himself in an ambulance and lying strapped onto a gurney was a mystery, but Coach Smith was sitting beside him and there was an EMT sitting on the other side of him. Was he crying? Screaming? Oh god. What was happening? Hours later, when he was finally back home and in his own bed, he wondered if and when he would wake up. None of this could really have happened. He was Reiner Braun, and Reiner Braun would never have shit himself on the field of play.

The rumors had started right away: Stohess High had resorted to underhanded tactics in order to win, they had put laxatives in the Gatorade bottles somehow. How else could they explain what had happened to Reiner? There would be a formal inquiry. In the meantime, Reiner would sit out the next game until he was fully recovered. He was just a teenager, for Christ’s sake. How could this even happen? What could have been a humiliating event turned Reiner into an innocent victim, the hapless target of a greedy grab for a cheap win by an opposing team. That was Coach Smith’s assessment and he was usually right about most things. And yet, the next week in school, not everyone was treating Reiner with sympathy. At least, one person wasn’t. Instead of soothing his wounded pride with extra long blowjobs, Armin was completely snubbing him, stubbornly silent in the face of Reiner’s incessant pestering. It didn’t matter how many times Reiner asked “What’s wrong with you?” and “Why won’t you talk to me?” and “When can I come over?” Armin wouldn’t respond, wouldn’t even look at him. The cold shoulder only made Reiner more determined, so determined that he had gone to Coach Smith for some additional romance advice.

“My girl is pissed at me and I don’t know why,” Reiner had complained as he sat out practice on the sideline next to his coach. “She won’t even tell me why she’s mad.”

Erwin had smiled magnanimously and capped it off with a paternal slap on the back. “Women. Go figure.” As much as it had hurt his ego to lose Marie to that pubes-on-chin, backstabbing Nile Dok, he could only be eternally grateful to that same motherfucker because it had all led to Levi, the love of his life, the man who inspired everything good and sweet and passionate in Erwin, the man who jumpstarted all of Erwin’s creative juices. And that meant poetry. Seeing Reiner at such a loss stirred the empathy that always resided within Erwin right underneath the surface of his cool, masculine demeanor. He was a confident man, sure of his self-worth and identity, and unafraid to show his softer side in order to woo a lover. He had written countless poems to Levi when they had started dating, and it had worked like a charm. After the seventy-sixth poem, Levi had finally caved in and consented to moving in with him, shouting like a prisoner being waterboarded, “Just quit the sappy drivel, okay? I’ll do anything you want. Just stop the goddamn poetry!” 

The memories swept over Erwin and prompted him to give Reiner the following advice, “Send your beloved some poetry. If you don’t know where to start, read some John Donne, some John Keats. Shit, even Shakespeare will do. A few well-composed lines can move a heart to open up like a flower.”

Reiner had stared, a little dumbfounded. “Uh, coach, I don’t know much about flowers but…how about legs? I’m just trying to get my girl to spread her legs for me.”

“Legs, flower petals,” Erwin had sighed nostalgically, “it’s all the same. It’s a metaphor, you see, a symbol of—”

“Okay, well,” Reiner had interrupted, “as long as I can get those legs to spread nice and wide, I’m good to go.”

It had now been three days that Reiner had texted Armin with ‘poems’ if one were willing to stretch one’s imagination like salt water taffy. He had gotten no positive response until today, when he saw Armin look at his phone right after he sent his most recent missive. After several moments, Armin had turned his head and looked in Reiner’s direction across the cafeteria, and for the first time in two weeks, he hadn’t stared daggers at him. Armin was looking crazy cute in his light blue cardigan. And instead of his usual slice of pizza, Armin was eating a hot dog today, which he took out of the bun as he kept his eyes trained on Reiner. The sight of that sausage disappearing into his perky mouth just about killed Reiner. That was it. Reiner was done worrying about whether he should or shouldn’t put it in Armin’s pooper*. He was going to do it. Fuck, yeah! Pound Town, baby! But when he approached Armin all he got was an unflinching glare again and then Armin had turned to that loser, Eren Jaeger, and made a comment about how he had had a wet dream about Tom Brady**. Wasn’t Tom Brady five hundred years old? Tom Brady wasn’t even blond and named Reiner Braun!

Reiner walked away and sat back next to Bertolt, who couldn’t wait to tell him that he had seen Annie and Mikasa making out under the bleachers the other day.

“Bert, dude, I’m not really in the mood for any talk about rug munching, okay?” Reiner said with a dejected sigh. What was the point of pretending? He missed Armin, who had obviously gone psycho on him. What had happened? Reiner wracked his brains and decided after the two seconds that it took to wrack said brains that he hadn’t done anything wrong. Shit. Maybe Armin _was_ a girl after all. Maybe he was on the rag. If only! That would explain everything, wouldn’t it? Then, like a vision in white, Annie sauntered over to him. He couldn’t help but notice that she was wearing a tight cashmere sweater that accentuated her firm breasts.

“Feeling any better?” asked Annie.

Reiner sat up and casually straightened his back with a roll of the shoulders, flexed his biceps underneath his thin long-sleeved cotton shirt. “Right as fucking rain,” he smirked. “I can prove it, too, if you’re interested.” 

Annie suppressed the desire to puke into her mouth and stirred the soft-serve cup of ice cream doused in chocolate syrup in her hand. She licked the spoon and sat down next to Reiner after wedging herself between him and Bertolt, who started sweating profusely. She kept her gaze on Reiner, though. “You probably need some extra calories,” Annie told Reiner. “After what happened at Stohess…don’t let those fuckers bring you down.” She scooped up a spoonful of ice cream and offered it to Reiner. “C’mon, big guy. I want you at 100% for the next game.”

She hand-fed him the ice cream and Reiner ate it all up with happy confusion. It took all of her self-control for Annie to keep a straight face. Earlier that morning, Mikasa had given her a small baggie full of crushed pills of Imodium A-D. Annie had sprinkled it on to the cup of soft serve ice cream and then used chocolate syrup to disguise the taste. Damn. She and Mikasa would be in so much trouble if they were caught but the opportunity to torture Reiner was too good to pass up. Plus, it gave her an avenue, a way to get closer to Mikasa without being too forward. She had never been interested in anyone before, but playing with Mikasa on the same offensive squad was an eye-opening surprise. Mikasa was tough, and pretty in a way that made Annie’s stomach lurch and leap inside her. What was that? It felt horrible and wonderful at the same time. When they had kissed at Reiner’s party, she had been a little drunk. But then, in the locker room, she had been sober and there it was, the desire to kiss her, to feel her body right up against her own skin. So they had kissed again and it had made her wet between her legs. If making Reiner hopelessly constipated meant more kissing and wetness then, fuck, she would do whatever it took to make it happen again. For a brief moment, she had hesitated about going through with this, especially when Armin’s own anger towards Reiner had wavered, but when Reiner had dared to flirt with her, she knew she was right to go forward with the punishment, that and the fact that Mikasa was watching her across the room with the fiercest of smiles.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Props to Ariusahh for the inspiration for this line. I take no credit for it.
> 
> **For those of you who don't follow American football, Tom Brady is the phenomenal quarterback for the New England Patriots. He isn't five hundred years old, but he might as well be at age forty and still at the top of his game.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> /THaNGks ‘ giving/  
> noun  
> 1\. the expression of gratitude, especially to God.  
> 2\. (in North America) an annual national holiday marked by religious observances and a traditional meal including turkey. The holiday commemorates a harvest festival celebrated by the Pilgrims in 1621, and is held in the US on the fourth Thursday in November.  
> 3\. a yearly shitshow notable for its unhealthy mix of friends and relatives and overindulgence of food and drink.

At six-thirty, the driveway was already full of cars, so Erwin parked his Volvo sedan on the street in front of the Craftsman bungalow, notable for its bright orange shutters against the dark blue paint of the house, and for its impressive privet hedge, which was expertly trimmed to resemble a row of upturned nippled breasts skirting the foundation. Even though Hange was the sole title holder of the property, it was Mike who took care of the maintenance of the house and the yard and the place had Mike’s stamp all over it: the man loved the orange and blue of his favorite ice hockey team, the Paradis Islanders, and he loved well-shaped tits…the more the better.

“Now, Levi,” Erwin hoped he didn’t sound like he was begging as he turned off the ignition and faced his neatly dressed lover sitting in the front passenger seat, “let’s try to keep our clothes on this time, shall we? At least until we’re done eating. We don’t need a repeat of _last year_.” Erwin cast a disapproving glance into the backseat and directed his next words at the long-haired lunatic dragging on a Gauloise in blatant disregard for his ‘My Car Is A No Smoking Zone’ rule. “And _you_. Don’t make me knock your greasy block off.” 

“Relax, _Dad_ ,” drawled Levi’s Uncle Kenny. He looked down at the ashes that had fallen on his already holey Metallica T-shirt and deliberately flicked them onto the floor of Erwin’s sickeningly clean car. In a move that shouldn’t appear threatening but did, because it was Kenny, he put on his hat and suggested to Erwin, all friendly-like, “You might want to take that fist out of your ass before you start shitting on my party.” Kenny yanked the handle and kicked the door open with a muddy boot, his long limbs unfolding amidst a cloud of cigarette smoke. He pulled his pervert’s trenchcoat tighter around his lanky frame and headed up the slate walkway, leaving the car door open just so he could enjoy the sound of Erwin’s blood boiling.

Kenny made it a point to visit Levi at least once a year, usually at Thanksgiving when he knew that Levi had time off from work, because his nephew was the only family—the only blood relative—that he had left in the world. Sure, he had numerous illegitimate children scattered across the globe, but those bastards didn’t count in Kenny’s book and he had no intention of ever paying child support. Fuck _that_ shit. He wouldn’t be tied down. He had clawed his way from the bottom up and was now a successful artist. His portraits of famous celebrities and social climbers, of bluebloods and inbred royalty, of nouveau riche scumbags and their trophy wives, were ‘painted’ with shards of the finest Chinese porcelain from the Ming and Qing Dynasties—which he would purchase at auction and then purposely shoot to pieces with his Colt revolver, using the shattered remains the way a saner artist might use oils—and sold for tens of millions of dollars to wealthy collectors and museums.

He lived and worked out of a large carriage house on a sprawling estate owned by the Reiss family, Old World aristocrats who supported Kenny in the manner of the Catholic Popes who had sponsored artists during the Renaissance. The manor house was converted into a four-star hotel several years back, though, but Kenny no longer needed their help. He was his own man now and answered to no one and he thought he had taught Levi to do the same, but, Jesus Christ, what was up with this Erwin fellow? Last year, Kenny had accompanied Levi and Erwin, whom he sarcastically called ‘Dad’ out of spite, to this very same house and he’d had a blast; he sure as hell wasn’t going to let that rule-imposing wannabe parent put a damper on his fun. He couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. He hadn’t raised Levi to be some docile, law-abiding citizen, for fuck’s sake. And he sure as shit hoped Hange would have that punch bowl out again as he rang the doorbell. 

“Erwin, seriously? Are you really going to do that right now?” asked Levi. He stood on the sidewalk holding a pecan pie and a tote bag full of wine bottles, more bemused than annoyed because he was watching Erwin’s delectable ass waving in the air as the man crammed his six-foot-two frame into the backseat. Normally, Levi was the clean freak, but when it came to his car, Erwin was totally OCD and that Kenny was a fucking slob. Erwin kept a rechargeable handheld vacuum in the trunk of his car for moments like this. 

“Look at these boot prints!” Erwin grunted in disgust. “Next time, that creepy uncle of yours can call a goddamn Uber for himself!”

With a heavy sigh, Levi turned and headed for the house. He could see Hange welcoming Kenny inside and he wasn’t in the mood to negotiate a truce between the man who had mentored him as a child and the man who was teaching him how to love now. There were better ways to handle a situation like this. “Mike, roll me a fat one!” Levi called out as soon as he stepped into the foyer. He handed Hange the pie. “Baked it myself.”

Hange squealed in manic delight. “Did you put in the secret ingredient?” she whispered.

“Yep. I ground the buds up in the coffee mill and mixed it in with the corn syrup, just like you said to.” With Kenny visiting for the holiday and irritating the hell out of Erwin, Levi couldn’t wait to feed Erwin a slice of that chemically enhanced pie to put him in better spirits. Levi lifted the bag with the bottles of wine and asked, “Should I take these into the kitchen?”

“Yeah,” said Hange, looking out the door. “Is he coming or not?”

“Give him a minute. He’s vacuuming the backseat.”

Sure enough, several minutes later Erwin was bounding up the stairs onto the porch carrying a hostess gift: a decorative bowl holding an assortment of hand soaps shaped like various fruits—bananas, apples, oranges, peaches and pears—all surprisingly realistic in appearance. “I picked this out myself,” boasted Erwin, not to be outdone by Levi’s baking skills. “You’ve got flour all over your face, my dear.” Erwin brushed a thumb across Hange’s cheeks and noticed her pupils, which were hugely dilated behind her perpetually dirty glasses, and the sheen of sweat on her skin. He licked his thumb and tsk-tsked in mock displeasure. “How much blow have you and Mike snorted already?”

“I heard that!” Mike shouted from the kitchen, “and it ain’t blow! It’s just some cheap-o speed Hange cooked up in her lab! Come try some!”

Hange nodded in agreement. “It’s good stuff, Erwin. It’s been three days and I still haven’t come down yet! And I see you brought Levi’s uncle again this year…eeex-ce-llent…” She wrapped one hand around Erwin’s arm and pulled him into the kitchen where all the guests were congregated around the center island snorting lines of white powder. “Just jump right in there, big guy. No need to be polite. I have to go finish off the roast beast!” She placed Levi’s pecan pie on the sideboard in the dining room next to all the other desserts and dashed out the backdoor armed with an acetylene blow torch.

“Finish off the roast beast, eh?” wondered Erwin. He set his hostess gift on the counter next to the sink and poured himself a glass of Cabernet. Then he grabbed a straw and got to work.

It was Thanksgiving dinner and that meant some kind of culinary catastrophe orchestrated by Hange, who treated everything in life as an excuse to run an experiment. Last year she had sent Mike into the woods with the directive to bring back a wild turkey or even a pheasant. “Just make sure it’s an avian creature large enough to feed at least ten people,” she had said. Eight hours later, Mike had returned with an unrecognizable carcass. He claimed that it was a Canadian goose that he had shot with his crossbow, but who knows? He had been chewing peyote to alleviate the boredom of sitting in a hunting blind up in the tree, so the ‘goose’ could have been just about anything from this world or even another dimension (if one were to believe those physicists proposing string theory). By some miracle, he had not only killed the thing with a single arrow, but he had then gutted and skinned it on the spot while quadruple rainbows arced across the sky in psychedelic splendor.

Hange had cured the mystery meat in salt for a few days, then boiled the lump of grey flesh, and then poured a can of Red Bull over it before putting it in the smoker for another six hours. By her scientific calculations, the meat would be tender and juicy like a perfectly cooked ham, but instead it had come out looking and tasting like an oversized blackened shoe designed for someone with a clubfoot. Go figure. The thing was inedible, so they had resorted to serving the stuffed rigatoni and the canned cream of broccoli soup that Mike had lifted from the school cafeteria’s pantry earlier in the week. Mike had lived with Hange long enough to know that there had better be a Plan B. That was one of their more successful Thanksgiving meals, mainly due to the antics of Kenny, who had spiked the punch bowl with LSD and put them all out of their gustatory misery.

***

By the end of the night, yet another lump of charred, unidentifiable ‘meat’ had been tossed into the trash and trays of macaroni and cheese from the school’s cafeteria had been served instead, much to everyone’s relief. The punch bowl laced with LSD was empty, the pecan pie and various other sweets were consumed, and Levi was once again tripping the light fantastic to the strains of Trent Reznor rasping, “I want to fuck you like an animal…” while he peeled off his clothes and strutted his stuff in front of a wildly hooting crowd of bombed co-workers and what may have been relatives of Hange and Mike…what did it matter? He had eyes only for Erwin, who couldn’t dance to save his life but, dang, he still looked awfully handsome chomping on that banana and burping soap bubbles.

“You give me wood, oh-oh-oh!” shouted Erwin over the sound of Trent Reznor crooning, “You get me closer to god…” Next to Erwin stood Kenny eating an odd-tasting peach and nodding to the cadence of the beautiful haiku his nephew’s lover was reciting: “If only you would be mine…We could strip it good!”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kenny is one of my favorite characters in the entire manga, so I couldn't resist bringing him in for a guest appearance. I love him for the same reason I love Levi: total, unapologetic badassery. Please forgive me. I just needed to get that out of my system.
> 
> I promise I'll get back to our pubescent teens in the next chapter.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jean spends a very special Thanksgiving with Marco.

Thanksgiving held no meaning for Jean’s parents, French nationals whose ancestors were staunch Dreyfusards back in the day, along with other enlightened intellectuals railing against collusion and corruption in the government. They kept a shrine to Alfred Dreyfus—a black-and-white framed photograph of the bespectacled army captain surrounded by candles on a table draped with a reproduction of the French flag—in the sunroom next to the potted African violets. Jean had never known if the ‘Dreyfus Affair’ and the continued veneration of the man had anything to do with his parents not celebrating Thanksgiving, but they did insist on honoring the traditions and holidays of their homeland: Easter, Christmas, New Year’s, Bastille Day.

In the Kirstein family, the distinctly non-Gallic Thanksgiving holiday was normally spent going to an annual mixer held at Sainte Marie de la Rose where there would be a live band playing old timey music and the adults, all gussied up, would dance like civilized people while the children stood around the buffet table eating crudités and lamb meatballs on toothpicks. It was okay when Jean was eight and his taste in girls ran the entire gamut from beautiful to butt-ugly, but at fifteen horny years of age, it really sucked big time because he knew there wouldn’t be any girls there who looked like Mikasa, who was half-Asian and therefore _rare_ and _exotic_ in a town where the Asian population was pretty much zero. From the moment he had laid hungry eyes on her in his art class and sprung an instantaneous stiffy, Jean had decided that nothing less than rare and exotic would ever be good enough for him, certainly not those run-of-the-mill girls scarfing down lamb meatballs. The prospect of being dragged to church for another pointless exercise in teen boredom was beyond depressing, so when Marco invited him to his house for Thanksgiving dinner two days before the holiday break, Jean thought, “Why the fuck not?”

Jean was an only child and, besides his parents, he didn’t have any other relatives living near enough to visit on a regular basis. What little entertaining his parents did at home were sedate affairs, normally dinners with co-workers from the embassy involving cocktails and adult chitchat by the lit fireplace, followed by a four-course meal beginning with consommé and ending with a plate of fruit and cheese drizzled with lavender honey. Conversation was always intelligent and thoughtful and centered around politics, the latest news on the royal family being the closest thing to gossip passed around the table along with the salt and pepper. He was a little overwhelmed, therefore, when his parents dropped him off at Marco’s house with a gigantic pumpkin pie from Costco and a backpack holding his pajamas and toothbrush—because Marco had also invited him to ‘stay over’—and found himself amidst a raucous crowd of Marco’s numerous family members: siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents, cousins, nieces and nephews, and parents who all talked over each other like they were trying to give each other whiplash. Drifting through the cacophony of voices, though, was the smell of food, lots of food, and probably way better tasting than meatballs in zesty pineapple sauce.

“I hope you’re hungry,” Marco said, his voice brimming with excitement as he led Jean through the press of bodies in the hallway. He was wearing a white shirt, a striped red, white, and green tie, and black trousers, like some innocent choir boy. His face was scrubbed, his cheeks rosy, all those freckles veritably sparkling under the light fixture on the ceiling. “Nonna always insists on tradition and that means lots of food.”

“Is pumpkin pie traditional enough?” asked Jean. “My mom picked it out.” He handed Marco the tire-sized pie and hung his jacket up in the coat closet, glad that he had opted to don his vest since Marco was wearing a freaking tie. He didn’t know it was going to be a ‘formal’ shindig. And… “I didn’t know you were Italian,” Jean stated to the sight of wildly gesticulating hands and the sound of too many words ending in a vowel all around him. “I mean, your last name is Bott. That’s not Italian at all.”

“Oh,” laughed Marco. “It’s actually Botticelli, like the artist.” He pointed to a framed reproduction of the _Birth of Venus_ (often referred to, tongue-in-cheek, as _Venus on the Half-Shell_ ) by the great Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli hanging on the wall next to the powder room. “My family shortened it to Bott when a couple of my great-uncles were imprisoned for…uh…something or other.” He quickly changed the subject, beaming proudly, “My dad built this house! He and all my older brothers run a construction company together now that Nonno is too old. I’m going to be a priest ‘cause Papà says I can’t hammer a nail in straight and Mamma says it would be good for our family to have an ‘in’ with the man upstairs.”

They ended up sitting at the ‘kids table’ set up in the kitchen with all of Marco’s nieces and nephews, getting first dibs on each course as it was brought out to the table in the dining room for the grown ups: five kinds of antipasti, soup, three kinds of pasta, roasted shrimp, stuffed turkey breast, six vegetable dishes, on and on. To Jean’s surprise, Marco referred to the tomato sauce as ‘gravy.’ He also learned that Marco had six older brothers, all of them married and with kids of their own. Marco was the youngest by far, born seven years after the next youngest son and the only child still living in the house. In other words, Marco had been a late-in-life, unplanned ‘accident’ for his parents. Marco revealed this sad fact to Jean, all smiles, as if he were telling him that he had received a gold medal for being the unexpected runt in a litter of seven pups. That Marco. It seemed like nothing could bring that kid down.

They got buzzed on Chianti and Prosecco, a good thing because after dinner everyone got up from the tables to stretch their legs while the coffee and desserts and tiny glasses of sambuca were readied and Jean, being the new face, was passed around like a sack of potatoes to have his cheeks pinched by every one of Marco’s relatives. He was asked if he had a girlfriend and what was her name and was she a good girl and did she have nice wide hips and how soon would they get married and have kids.

“But I just started high school,” Jean tried explaining, “and I don’t even have a girlfriend yet.”

“How can you not have a girlfriend?” cried one of Marco’s grandmothers. She slapped each of his already reddened cheeks as if that would remedy his pathetic girlfriendless state. “Look at you! You are so handsome…like that…that…Gérard Depardieu! Or Jean-Paul Belmondo!”

Gérard Depardieu was maybe considered as remotely handsome as a dumb ox when he was fifty years younger and two hundred pounds lighter, and Jean-Paul Belmondo was gross and dead, but Marco’s grandmother had opened a can of worms and now everyone was getting into it, throwing out names like Brad Pitt and Ryan Gosling and Zac Efron. Then someone shouted out, “Nicholas Cage!”

“How the heck do I look like that old ghoul?” asked an indignant Jean. He whirled around to face the nutjob proposing this idea, Marco’s nine-year-old nephew, Anthony. “That guy’s got a horse face!” Jean insisted, clearly miffed by the comparison.

A collective gasp of horror sucked all the air out of the room. Little did Jean know that the actor Nicholas Cage, nephew of the great auteur Francis Ford Coppola—himself worshipped in this household as the director behind _The Godfather_ trilogy and _Apocalypse Now_ —was a man who held a place of adoration in the hearts of every single Bott since Cage’s brilliant performance opposite Cher in _Moonstruck_ , a movie that epitomized everything conjured up by the words ‘romance’ and ‘Italian’ and ‘amore.’ Although, no one was using the word ‘amore’ right now as shouts rang out all around Jean like fists boxing his ears. Instead, he heard words like ‘idiota’ and ‘deficiente’ and ‘stupido,’ words he easily recognized despite knowing not one lick of Italian. He figured that this was likely the first and last time he’d be invited to Thanksgiving dinner.

***

At midnight, with the party still going strong and Jean limp and drained from defending himself against accusations of aesthetic blindness, Marco led Jean upstairs to his bedroom to settle them in for the night. “Here we are,” Marco announced with a flourish. “Make yourself at home.”

A very grateful Jean walked in, tossed his backpack into a corner, and flopped his tired body onto the large bed in the middle of the room. The mattress shifted and rolled under him with a strange gurgle. He bolted upright in a panic. “Jesus Christ! You have a fucking waterbed?”

“Shhh!” Marco put one finger to his lips and then pointed at the portrait of a haloed and bearded Jesus with flowing locks and piercing blue eyes hanging on the wall opposite the bed. “You really shouldn’t use the Lord’s name in vain. Not in front of him, at least.” 

Jean stared across the room at the portrait of the Savior with his right hand raised in blessing, his eyes seeming to stare right back at Jean, who could only blurt out, “How the hell do you jack it with _him_ watching?”

Marco opened the drawer of his nightstand and took out a square of black silk cloth and calmly draped it over the picture. “Just like that,” smiled Marco. Then he sat down on the bed next to Jean, the mattress emitting another loud gurgle, and asked, “Shall we get started?”

“Wh-what do you mean?” Jean stammered. As if this evening couldn’t get any weirder! Marco was one grade ahead of him and Jean only knew him because they had lunch period and gym class together and the guy was always so friendly towards him. He hadn’t really thought there was anything creepy about Marco beyond his goal of becoming a priest, and Jean was happy to have an upper classman befriend him when he had so few people he could call his friend in his own grade. Being an only child had made Jean independent that way; he liked his solitude and didn’t rely on others to entertain him. Outside of his recent infatuation with Mikasa, he had never given much thought to his desires, or even considered that he might be lonely and in want of real companionship. Until now, the fantasies that he would play in his head had been enough, and yet, the way Marco was looking at him made him wonder if having something more concrete was within the realm of possibility. “You’re not talking about…” Jean gulped. The rest of the words just died in his throat.

“Spanking the monkey together?” Marco finished for him. He shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. “Why not? This bed used to be my brother Gino’s. He lost his virginity on it when he was fourteen, so I guess you could say it’s got good pedigree.”

“P-pedigree?”

“Yeah, you know, good vibes. When he let me have his old bed, he told me, ‘Marco, I hope you get as much banging out of it as I did.’ So, it’s kinda been blessed, wouldn’t you say?”

“Mon dieu…”

“There’s nothing to be scared of. I mean, it’s only natural. You’re a guy, I’m a guy; it’s what guys do, right?” Marco had grown up with six older brothers and walking in on one of them jerking off was as commonplace as seeing a sparrow at the birdfeeder. No big deal. “My brothers say it’s good to keep the pipes clean, so…uh…” He reached out and undid Jean’s belt buckle. Jean’s face was as red as a beet and he looked utterly, adorably confused. “You know how to do this, don’t you?”

“Do…what?”

“Jerk off.”

“Of course I know how. Shit.” Jean turned his face away and bit his lip. This was so fucking embarrassing. He had only ever touched himself when he was in the shower or late at night when he was in bed with the door locked. And even then, he would never make a sound. He wasn’t afraid of his parents hearing him. That wasn’t it. He didn’t want…he didn’t want to hear the sound of his own need. He had never been close to anyone before—not even his parents, who were just his parents and nothing more—and believed that it was part and parcel of his own inner strength, so why was he feeling so weak right now, so lonely and afraid? He didn’t even know Marco that well…why was he letting him unzip his jeans? Why wasn’t he telling him ‘no’ or ‘stop’ or ‘I don’t want to’ or…instead he heard himself saying, “Kiss me first…kiss me first and then we…can…” 

And then Marco was kissing him—lips, tongue, teeth—and Jean started mumbling things like, “I’ve never kissed anyone before” and “No way am I going to confession” before the words became monosyllabic and nonsensical: “fuck” and “ah” and “ungh.” He felt Marco push him down onto the bed, the water sloshing beneath him and lifting his body in undulating waves as Marco yanked his jeans and briefs down past his hips. He wasn’t even sure if he was hard, this was all so disorienting and strange and wildly exciting. He looked down in time to see the back of Marco’s head lowering over his groin and then he felt it, the warm wet heat of Marco’s mouth enveloping his cock, the slick slide of his tongue fluttering across the slit, around the crown several times, fingers gripping and twisting around the shaft. It took only mere seconds it seemed and Jean felt himself cumming fast and hard. It was only afterwards that he realized he had screamed out, the sound of his cries so foreign in his ears that he didn’t recognize his own voice at first. But it was, it was and he wanted to die of shame, except, well, if he died of shame then he wouldn’t be able to do this again, and he wanted to do this again for sure. Out of a sense of fairness, he was going to return the favor but Marco was already lying next to him finishing in his own hand, shooting onto the front of his shirt and all over his tie with a satisfied groan.

They took turns washing up in the bathroom. It seemed a little silly to be wearing pajamas in bed after doing what they had just done minutes ago, but Marco was acting like nothing out of the ordinary had happened, so Jean decided to follow suit and pretend he hadn’t had both his mind and cock blown. “Where’d you learn to do that?” asked Jean, the darkened room making him feel brave. He could still hear the murmur of voices from downstairs, and the occasional sound of footsteps going up and down the stairs.

Marco turned to face him in bed. “Suck dick?” He gave a low chuckle. “Oh, I watched a video on YouTube.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Marco is killed off in such a sad and horrible way in the manga, it really breaks your heart because the guy didn't deserve it, so I wanted to write something sweet and funny for him and Jean. I realize the tone of this chapter might seem a little out of step with the rest of the story thus far, but it felt right for this ship somehow. Let me know if you think I've dropped the ball.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Armin and Reiner finally reconcile. Sexy times!!!

“Get those skinny arms moving, little boy,” barked Old Man Arlert. He stood on the front porch, car keys jangling in his hand, and took a deep drag on his Newport menthol cigarette. “Those leaves aren’t going to rake themselves.”

The sound of his grandfather coughing up half a lung made Armin turn around in the yard to watch him shuffle to his car, a 1959 NSU Prinz that the old man cherished, wouldn’t let go of because he had lost his virginity in it, although _how_ was still a mystery to Armin since the two-door post-war vehicle was the size of a tin can. He supposed his grandfather was more nimble back in the Dark Ages and could plow a girl in a jackknife position. “Yes, Grandpa,” Armin mumbled back, sadly bemoaning his own unplowed status.

“Going down to the pub,” Old Man Arlert called out as he turned the ignition and the tiny car jumped to life with an apoplectic rattle. The blue smoke of burning oil spewed out the tailpipe and hung in the air like a noxious cloud. “Hair of the dog, as they say, heh heh. I’ll be back before dinner.”

Armin waved the rake in his hand as his grandfather peeled out of the driveway at rocket speed, then puttered down the street at fifteen miles an hour. His grandfather was meeting his buddies, a gang of widowed old farts like himself, at a local watering hole where seniors only had to pay $2 per beer from 1-5 pm each day. Armin and Old Man Arlert had spent Thanksgiving dinner at the Jaegers the night before. Mrs. Jaeger had roasted a whole turkey stuffed with cornbread and sausage and sage and served with more stuffing on the side. There was cranberry sauce and baked yams, mashed potatoes and gravy, a green bean casserole topped with fried onions. Dessert was a trio of apple, pecan, and pumpkin pies with vanilla ice cream too. Old Man Arlert had thoroughly enjoyed the spread and dispensed more unwanted advice about the proper handling of women. Ugh. Luckily, Eren’s older half-brother Zeke was there to deflect attention.

Zeke, who was ten years older* than Eren and a product of Grisha’s first marriage to a socialite, Dina Fritz, played for the Marley Giants. He was their ace pitcher and quite famous for his wicked fastball, a fact that drove Eren nuts with jealousy. This year, though, Eren was even more livid because Zeke, like so many other professional athletes, was sporting a full beard like some unwashed hippie from the ‘70s while Eren had yet to shave his cheeks even once.

“You look like a hairy ape!” taunted Eren as he secretly seethed with admiration for his half-brother’s hirsuteness. “Betcha got a hairy ass! And hairy balls, too!” Eren could count the number of pubes sprouting around his own junk like paltry crops on a barren land, a mortifying slap in the face because he knew full well that he wouldn’t be considered a _man_ until he exhibited those all-important secondary sex characteristics, and for a guy that meant facial hair and pubes, both of which he still sorely lacked. In that regard, he was no further along than Armin, and Armin was often mistaken for a freaking girl! “Hey, Zeke,” Eren continued to jeer, feeling especially brave because the adults had all retired to the living room for their coffee and dessert and Mikasa and Annie were in the kitchen putting the leftovers into Tupperware containers. He shoveled another forkful of pumpkin pie into his mouth, daring, “Why don’t you go in there and show those two gross-out lesbos your hairy junk. They’re probably gagging for something to eat besides pussy.”

“Why don’t _we_ go upstairs, Boy Blunder,” Zeke suggested instead, “and you can _kiss_ my hairy ass ‘cause I can see that _you’re_ the one who’s gagging for it. And while you’re on your knees, you can _lick_ my hairy balls, too.” Zeke wadded up his napkin and whipped it across the dining room table, hitting Eren in the eye. “And if you weren’t such a pathetic piece of shit, you’d know that Mikasa and her little friend are fucking _hot_.” 

Eren elbowed Armin in a ‘Hey, buddy, back me up here!’ gesture, but his rant about Zeke’s body hair only made Armin think longingly about Reiner and his thick blond pubes, and that led to thoughts about Reiner’s cock in his mouth, and a whole slew of other super romantic things kept rising up into Armin’s throat even as he swallowed mouthful after mouthful of regret with his dessert. Goddamn it, he missed him! Maybe it wasn’t so bad if Reiner had pictured Krista in his mind all those times. Armin could do the same thing, surely, as payback. He could picture that hunky Social Studies teacher, Erwin Smith, the next time he and Reiner got it on, _if_ they ever got it on again. Take that, Reiner! At least Erwin Smith wouldn’t send him such shit poetry. Erwin’s poems would probably feature words like ‘exquisite’ and ‘ecstasy’ and not ‘wood’ and ‘strip’ like he was some pervy craftsman. But who was he kidding? Armin didn’t want the Social Studies teacher, he wanted Reiner in all his big, dumb, inarticulate, jock glory. He just didn’t know how to forgive him without looking like a fool. Armin still had his pride, after all. No matter how small and wimpy he appeared on the outside, inside he was a giant of colossal proportions with a head full of steam. If Reiner wanted him back, he’d have to fight for him.

***

The day after Thanksgiving was when people engaged in the annual ritual of leaf raking around the neighborhood. It was a way to burn off some calories—a necessity for most after the Roman-style feasting the night before—in a final push to clean up the yards before the winter snows came, and Reiner was in the backyard raking like a madman. He was super duper happy because that morning he had finally taken the dump of the century after a week of agonizing, bewildering constipation. He felt free like never before, light as a bird’s feather wafting on a breeze along with the happy tune he was whistling. He made quick work of the leaves, raking them onto a plastic tarp and dragging them to the compost pile behind the garage. By noon he was done and after a lunch of leftover turkey and cranberry sandwiches, he decided to go for a bike ride. Bertolt, who lived two doors down from him, was visiting relatives for the long holiday weekend and not available for twenty-four hours of gaming, so Reiner strapped on his helmet and took off on his ten-speed. He rode for a good hour, zipping up and down the streets near his house, then around the bike lanes at the local park, then through the wooded paths at the outskirts of town before looping back. He was pumped, his adrenalin racing as he pedaled hard, the autumn air cool on his face and fragrant with the smell of dry leaves and damp earth. He got to thinking about recent events—the shitting and the not shitting—and how it all seemed to follow on the heels of his mysterious tiff with Armin. Had he really offended Armin somehow? And was he being punished for it? He didn’t believe in God or fate or destiny, but he did believe in following his gut, his instincts—or maybe his cock, which had a mind of its own—and right now he had one thought floating through his head like an advertisement pulled behind a prop plane in the sky and it was telling him: Must Fill the Donut Hole**.

He was so engrossed in thoughts of donuts and holes and cream fillings that it took him by surprise when he found himself coasting down Armin’s street. His heart skipped a beat when, up ahead, he saw that round blond head of hair, the light blue cardigan sweater, yeah, that crazy little bastard was raking in the front yard of his house. The pile of leaves next to Armin was negligible. Reiner braked hard in front of the house, rubber tires squealing, and called out, “You’re doing a shit job!”

Armin turned around and, seeing who it was, went back to raking like Reiner wasn’t there. “You’d know all about shit, wouldn’t you?” he muttered over his shoulder.

Reiner leaned his bike against a dogwood and hooked his helmet onto a handlebar. He came to stand in front of Armin, his arms crossed over his chest like armor. “That’s a low blow, Armin. I was in the freaking _ER_. I could have _died_ and this is what you say to me? Why don’t you tell me why you’ve got such a big stick up your ass?” Well, that was weird, because he had _meant_ to say something irresistibly romantic like, “Gee, I’ve really missed your slutty mouth on my dick” or “I’m here to fill your donut hole with cream,” but for some reason those other decidedly un-romantic words came out instead. Not good. Armin was glaring at him like a life size Aryan Chucky doll.

“Get the fuck away from me, you dickweed!” Armin whacked Reiner over the head with the handle of the rake but Reiner just yanked it out of Armin’s hand, snapped it in two across his knee, tossed the pieces aside, and slapped him across the face in one smooth uninterrupted motion, like a performance choreographed for a goon. Armin was stunned into gaping silence, a whole series of emotions rippling through him: first surprise, then anger, then hurt, then arousal. He couldn’t believe the last one, but he could smell Reiner’s sweat, feel the heat of Reiner’s own fury radiating from him, and it was turning Armin on like crazy. Holy fucking hell, his cock was twitching in his pants, his legs jellifying beneath him, but that didn’t matter because Reiner had picked him up and flung him over his shoulder and was carrying him up to the front porch. “What are you doing?” Armin screeched, his head upside down. “You can’t go inside! Grandpa’s taking a nap!”

Reiner wasn’t buying any of that nonsense. “If he’s inside, where’s his goddamn car?” he snarled. “You’re a shit liar and an even shittier boyfriend and I’m done playing games with you.” He let himself into the house and slammed the door shut behind him.

“Put me down, motherfucker!” Armin beat his fists on Reiner’s back to no effect. He was only giving himself vertigo as Reiner carried him up the stairs and into his room.

“Yeah, I’ll put you down, alright.” He threw Armin onto the bed and immediately pinned him onto the mattress with his body. “I’ll put you down like the rabid little dog that you are!”

“How _dare_ you call me your ‘boyfriend’!” spat Armin. He squirmed beneath the weight of Reiner’s body but when Reiner held his wrists above his head and squeezed, the pain only made Armin moan with desire. “You’re only thinking about Krista, you dishonest fuck. I know all about the shitty things you said about me.” Armin was sobbing now and rubbing his crotch up against Reiner. He was a hot mess of aching need and sorrow, and his heart felt like it was breaking to pieces inside him. “Go ahead and fuck me while you’re thinking about her. I don’t care anymore. I know you don’t want me.”

Reiner stared down at him, stunned and silent. He watched Armin cry pitiful tears beneath him, his mind racing back in time to grasp at a lost memory. “What the fuck are you talking about? When did I ever say anything…? I never said anything like…oh…shit…” It finally came to him. Christ, it was all so stupid! He had seen Ymir hanging all over Krista in the hallway that day and, out of jealousy and spite and because he was such an alpha bastard, he couldn’t resist the opportunity to piss on Ymir’s territory, so he had told Krista in front of Ymir that he always fantasized about her when he was drilling Armin. The comment was meant to get a rise out of Ymir; it had nothing to do with Krista, nothing to do with Armin, nothing to do with Reiner’s real feelings for him. “Armin. Armin!” Reiner shook the smaller boy by the shoulders, then slapped him across the face again to make him stop crying. “Armin,” Reiner said softly as Armin blinked and hiccupped a stuttering breath. “Listen to me, Armin. It was just a mistake. A misunderstanding. What I said…I was just trying to piss off Ymir, okay? I don’t care about Krista and I sure as hell don’t think about her when I’m with you, you gotta believe me. Do you believe me?”

Armin shook his head slowly, tears still sliding down his face. No. He didn’t believe him.

“Then…will you let me prove it?” asked Reiner. He licked his lips and swallowed, the image of Armin’s pink little donut hole flashing before his mind’s eye and making him salivate. “Will you let me go all the way with you?” He bent down and kissed Armin, their teeth scraping together as he went in a little too eagerly, and then he was sucking Armin’s soft slick tongue into his own mouth and hearing Armin’s filthy moans filling his ears. “You know I want you, Armin. I want you, my honey, my sweetheart, my darling little dude.” Suddenly, the poetry started gushing forth like a rushing stream fed by melting snow in the spring: pure, crystal clear, unstoppable. He was quoting John Donne and John Keats and Shakespeare but Armin had other ideas.

“No, not that,” Armin panted as they both stripped off their clothes. He reached into his nightstand, pushing aside all his dildos, and pulled out the bottle of lube and a condom. “Tell me that last one you sent me. The one about—”

“You give me wood, oh,” Reiner recited, his voice low and husky in his throat as he rolled on the condom and pulled Armin into his lap. That was Coach Smith’s poem, god bless the man, and Coach Smith had also told him to let his ‘girl’ ride him for the first time. Except… “Is this your first time, Armin?” Reiner wasn’t about to tell Armin that he hadn’t actually authored that heartwarming haiku, nor was he going to tell Armin that he was still a virgin, too. He was hoping that they could go down this road together, like Romeo and Juliet, just two teenagers hopelessly, passionately in love.

“Yeah,” Armin murmured as he slicked himself up with his fingers. It wasn’t an outright lie. He’d fucked himself with his dildo collection many times already, but he’d never had a real cock inside him, so... “Yeah, you’re my first.” He positioned himself over Reiner’s dick, his eyes falling on the words ‘Pound Town’ tattooed above his pubes, his own heart pounding in his chest. Reiner’s hands were gripping his slim hips as he lowered himself down onto his sheathed cock. “Oh…my…god…” Armin threw his head back, squeezed his eyes shut as he felt Reiner pushing into him, opening him up in ways so much better than any piece of plastic or silicone. Reiner was flesh and blood and his thick hot length was burning a path inside him that hurt so good, so good he could barely register the touch of Reiner’s mouth on his neck, his fingers rubbing his nipples or clutching at his ass cheeks. Armin rolled his hips and took the last few inches of Reiner’s cock inside him. He thought he would burst, he was so filled, so full and he let his body go its own way, shaking and trembling and then bouncing in quick, jerky movements until the ache was too much and something gave way inside him like a bomb going off. He reached down and took his own cock in his hand, tugged once and came with a cry, spurting messy and wet all over Reiner’s chest. It wasn’t until he felt Reiner kissing his cheeks that he thought to open his eyes and ask, “Did you come?”

Reiner laughed, a sheepish grin on his face. “I came as soon as…uh…I was inside you.”

Armin wiggled his ass. “But…you’re still hard.”

“Heh.” In one swift easy movement, Reiner flipped Armin onto his back. “I told you already: you give me wood.” He hooked his arms behind Armin’s knees and began rocking into him, nice and slow and deep. “And I’ve got a lot more cream for your donut hole.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * I have no idea what the age gap is between Eren and Zeke in the manga, but I'm guessing it's around 10 years difference.
> 
> ** Gotta give credit where credit is due: the whole reference to donut holes was inspired by an early chapter in the manga Junjou Romantica where 18-year-old Misaki comes across a BL novel in the apartment of his lover Usagi-san. The title of the novel is "When the Donut Hole is Filled" or something like that. For all I know, there could be an actual novel with that title, which would be so fucking awesome if it were true!


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Christmas is coming up and Levi is worried.

It was five minutes before the start of the first period and Hange was standing in the hallway next to her classroom polishing off a Hostess Sno Ball, the bubblegum pink kind. Levi walked up to her holding a Styrofoam cup with a tea bag floating in it, a rare sight indeed. She assessed him quickly—red-orange slacks, blue shirt, orange tie, hair still damp, a slight limp to his gait—and offered an educated guess: “Did someone just enjoy a quickie?”

“Get your mind out of the gutter, you freak,” grumbled Levi. “Today’s lecture is on complementary and tertiary colors. I look fucking hideous and all you notice is that I got banged?” Yeah, Erwin had drilled him nice and deep an hour ago and it was either make a horrible cup of tea in the faculty lounge or skip his shower. There was no way he was going to skip his shower, not after the way Erwin had finished all over him after a long weekend of no sex because Kenny was staying in the guest room and Erwin was too bent out of shape to get it up until Kenny left at six-thirty that morning. Erwin had ushered Kenny out the door as soon as the Uber driver showed up and then taken Levi back to bed, where he proceeded to celebrate in glorious fashion. The fucking had been awesome, but it sucked to leave the apartment with the sheets hopelessly wrecked and no time for breakfast, and even worse that he had to drink tea made from a god awful tea bag. “I hate the first day back from break.”

“Mmm,” nodded Hange. “This is the time of year when all the weirdos start coming out of the woodwork.”

Levi shot her a sideways glance, eyeing the little flecks of pink coconut stuck on the corners of her mouth and observed, “Yeah, I’m looking at one right now. It’s not even eight-thirty and you’re wasted already?” Wasted or not, Hange wasn’t wrong in her claim. December meant exams and students losing all sense of focus and having meltdowns as everyone, students and faculty alike, hung on desperately until Christmas Eve, when winter break would begin. Things wouldn’t be this bad again until June, when the process would begin anew leading up to summer break.

“Hey, speaking of weirdos,” Hange gushed, ignoring Levi’s accusation about her early morning drug habits, “it was nice seeing your Uncle Kenny again. That man certainly knows his chemistry.”

“Try telling that to Erwin. Those two together are like nitroglycerin and a lit match.” 

“Ka-boom, eh?”

“Yeah,” Levi muttered, “and I’m in the middle. See you in fifty.”

He effectively euthanized his class with a mind-numbing ten-minute lecture on Josef Albers and Johannes Itten and their Bauhausian theories on color and nearly put himself to sleep in the dark as he showed some examples of Color Field paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Barnett Newman. The class remained subdued when he turned the lights back on and Levi could only assume they were all suffering the same post-Thanksgiving pre-Christmas malaise that Hange had mentioned earlier. God knows, Levi couldn’t blame them. He wasn’t in the mood either to be in class dressed like a walking accident at Sherwin Williams*, and then he saw Jean fingering something in the backpack he had at his feet. Hmm. While the students went about mixing primary and secondary colors and painting color wheels, he walked about the room and nonchalantly took a quick peek into Jean’s backpack as he passed by him. It was nothing but a tie, a striped tie in red, green, and white. It would have made a good example to show for his color lecture, but Levi decided to let it pass, opting to sit at his desk and indulge in some of his own concerns.

It was four weeks before Christmas and Levi was counting down the days with dread. He would be turning the big 3-0 on December 25th. It should be fucking _illegal_ to be born on a holiday, he’d heard others complain. Talk about getting _ripped off_ when it came to presents. Seriously?  Receiving doubled-up gifts wasn’t the cause of his unease and he didn’t care for all the mandated consumerist bullshit in the first place. He had grown up poor, with a mother who was a whore apparently. He had very little recollection of her, only that she had dark hair like him. He had never met his father, probably a ‘lowlife scumbag motherfucker’ according to his Uncle Kenny, a case of the pot calling the kettle black, but Kenny had taken him in after his mother’s death so he wouldn’t have to go into an orphanage. Kenny had no interest in raising a child, but Kuchel was his sister and he loved her, even if she was a slut and a heroin addict and dead from an overdose. He did his best to teach his nephew all the things necessary to survive in a harsh world where the haves kept feeding off the have-nots like parasites.

Was he a good father to Levi? No, unless thuggery and shoplifting and illicit drug-taking qualify as life skills, in which case his uncle was a great dad. But Levi still…had fond memories of those days. There was a man who would visit Kenny’s studio and look at the paintings in progress. Kenny called Uri his ‘patron’ who lived in the ‘big house’ but, really, the man was Kenny’s lover. Even Levi could recognize the genuine affection between them, though he had yet to experience it himself. And he wouldn’t experience it, not until he met Erwin. All the others had been disappointing trials and fucking errors and now he was going to be thirty and what? Thirty was when a man came into his own, wasn’t it? Thirty was when a man got promotions at work, when he got married and bought a house and had kids if he were some vanilla straight guy. Well, that wasn’t him and all that hetero baloney wasn’t for him either, was it? He didn’t know _what_ he wanted except he was itching for something more. Something like joy…commitment…something romance-y. It was sickening and gross and twisting Levi’s stomach into knots. He looked at his watch and counted down the minutes until he could hightail it to Hange’s supply room for a few hits of weed and maybe one of those pink Sno Balls.

It didn’t help that Levi was shit at buying gifts for Erwin, who just _had_ to like Christmas, always insisted on putting up a goddamn tree—a _real_ one that dropped needles all over the fucking place—and decorating the thing even though it was just the two of them, _sans_ kids, the only reason to even do such ridiculous stuff, as far as Levi was concerned. That Levi’s birthday coincided with Christmas only made Erwin even more gung-ho, calling it ‘the day our Lord Levi was born’ like the heretical man that he was. That morning on the drive in, Erwin had asked him what he wanted this year for the ‘milestone’ event.

“I’m turning thirty, Erwin. I’m not ancient like you. Just give me forty-eight hours of your hard dick and I’m happy.” Erwin had merely rubbed his chin, deep in thought, which prompted Levi to say, “Why don’t you tell me what _you_ want?”

“Who? Me?” Erwin pulled his thick brows together, deep in thought once again. “A jigsaw puzzle. The more pieces the better.”

“Jesus Christ. That’s just…why don’t I get you a fucking rocking chair and cane?”

The first Christmas they had celebrated together had been a total snafu, but they’d only been on intimate terms for less than four months at that point and Levi wasn’t surprised that they had crashed and burned. That year, there had been twenty-seven small packages under the tree—one for every year of Levi’s life—and Levi couldn’t even hide his dismay when he discovered that Erwin had gone to various stores and bought as many different kinds of teas as he could find.

“But…” Erwin stammered when he saw Levi’s crestfallen expression, “I thought you loved tea. And these here…” he explained, snatching up six boxes, “…these I found at Williams Sonoma. The clerk said they’re _imported_!”

It made Levi feel like an asshole to tell Erwin that he only brewed tea from loose leaves, not bags, and he only drank black tea, not chamomile or chai or lemon verbena or peppermint or ginger or whatever-the-fuck other flavor. For his part, he had bought Erwin a French press and was met with equal disappointment.

“I was really hoping for one of those Keurig things,” Erwin had sulked, “or a Nespresso!”

So, they were even, Levi supposed. The next year was less of a fail, having lived together for eleven months. That year, Erwin bought him a brandy new Bosch dishwasher to replace the one that came with the apartment, an appliance even older than Erwin because it was _avocado_ and sounded like a jet plane taking off the one time they had dared to use it.

“Look here!” Erwin had said proudly, pointing to the new user’s manual. “It has a sanitizing feature!” 

Levi had bought Erwin floor protectors custom fitted for his Volvo and removable so they could be hosed off, as well as a detailing package at their local garage. No way in hell could they be accused of being romantic. The year after, they had splurged on the impractical: a thousand dollars’ worth of caviar and champagne between the two of them, which they blew through faster than Levi’s Uncle Kenny snorted his supply of coke.

***

At the end of the class period, Levi finally got around to handing back the portraiture assignments. They had been sitting in one of the flat file drawers where Levi had left them when Armin had suffered his crying fit, and he would have forgotten to give them back altogether had Mikasa not reminded him as they were rinsing their palettes out at the sink. Interestingly enough, as soon as Levi handed them back, Mikasa went up to Jean and asked him for the obscene drawing he had done of her ‘lady parts.’

Jean responded with a shocked, “Really?” and then a suspicious, “Why?”

With a casual shrug, Mikasa explained, “I want to give it to someone.” When Jean hesitated, she added, “I want to give it to my _girlfriend_.”

That really made Jean’s eyes pop. He opened his mouth, then closed it again. When he had done the drawing of Mikasa, he had had every intention of using it to jerk off to at a later date but keeping it now seemed rather pointless. Marco had let him have the tie he had worn at Thanksgiving and then sloppily cum on and Jean had been using that tie each night since, wrapping it around his dick or rubbing it against his mouth when he choked the chicken. He had even brought it with him to school so he could secretly touch it and remember the pervy things they had done that night. Christ, just knowing it was tucked in his backpack was enough to give him a chub. He couldn’t wait to see Marco at lunch time, and then there was gym class afterwards where they’d both be naked in the showers—sweet!—so he made a big display of rolling up the drawing and presenting it to Mikasa with a bow, like he was some Marquis acting all gentlemanly towards a Duchesse.

As completely bizarre a sight as that was, it gave Levi an idea. He called Mikasa over to his desk and made an offer to purchase the drawing she had done of him in all his naked glory. “Just name your price, within reason, of course.” He couldn’t believe it when she gave him the same reaction she had gotten from Jean—“Really? Why?”—to which Levi gave her the same response she had given Jean, “I want to give it to someone.”

Levi didn’t have to say, “I want to give it to my _boyfriend_ ” because Mikasa already knew that he and Erwin Smith were an item and, well, it didn’t even matter anymore because, like her stalker Jean, she no longer wanted to use her drawing of Levi as a masturbatory aid. She had invited Annie to the house for Thanksgiving dinner and Annie had slept over. Yeah, the sleeping part was nice, but even nicer was all the stuff they had done before going to sleep—the kissing, the rubbing, the fingering _down there_ ; all that slick wet velvety hotness. She didn’t even care if Eren had heard them moaning and was now teasing her about it without end. She didn’t care that he had threatened to tell his parents. “Go ahead, jackass,” Mikasa had told him at breakfast. “At least I’m not going to die a virgin like you are.”

“Finger-fucking doesn’t count, you dumb bitch,” Eren had shot back smugly. “Only _cock_ counts!” 

“Oh? Like that little mini marshmallow dangling between your legs? You’re not going to make anyone bleed with that tiny thing.”

Eren had gagged on his Cheerios, he was so incensed and practically in tears from rage. “Just you wait, Mikasa. One day, I’m gonna be a man, and _everyone_ will know the true power of my dick!”

Hearing that vaunting statement—so full of hope that would only be dashed—had actually melted Mikasa’s heart. “You poor, stupid fuck,” she had said, pouring some more milk into his cereal bowl and encouraging, “Eat up, little man.” Eren’s desires were really no more silly than her own, Mikasa realized, at least when it came to Levi Ackerman, but she was luckier than Eren, because she had Annie and that meant she was no longer going to make a fool of herself pining for someone who would never want her back. Levi was still hot, though, and she could still undress him with her eyes whenever she wanted in class. “Change that A- to an A+ and I’ll give you the drawing for free,” she told Levi.

It took only two seconds of contemplation for Levi to say, “Deal.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was just all over the place. Sorry about that. Don't know what happened.
> 
> *Sherwin Williams is a paint store.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren attempts to bust a move at the school's Annual Winter Dance.

Desperation will goad a man…er…a boy, rather, to all kinds of extreme action. Call it the Darwinian imperative for survival, the mindless drive to pass on one’s genes through any means necessary or, in the case of a teenage boy, the relentless desire to stick one’s cock into some orifice. In the Kingdom of Animalia, some species will resort to butting heads, literally, or to building bowers lined with shiny objects, or to warbling, screeching, strutting and pissing on trees, all in the hopes of getting busy. Eren was ready to do any and all, having watched a Nature program on PBS that was both inspirational and weirdly titillating, and by Monday morning an idea had formed in his head. The Annual Winter Dance organized by the PTA was right around the corner and it would be his big chance to shine. Almost all the freshmen, sophomores, and juniors attended the event, held every year before Christmas break to raise money for the school’s Scholarship Fund, money that would be awarded in June to the ten graduating seniors with the top GPAs. Each student attending the fundraising event, which was overseen by the faculty and held in the school’s gym, had to pay an admission fee, and there would be a deejay, food, drinks, a raffle for various donated prizes, and a contest for best dance performance. Bingo. Surely a spectacular performance on the dance floor would win Eren the admiration of at least one prospective fuck buddy, preferably female, but he wasn’t going to say ‘no’ if some other boy confessed his love after being wowed by…whatever it was that he was going to do. Holy shit! So exciting!

“Armin. Armin!” Eren yanked Armin’s hair to get his attention. Armin had told him at the start of their Digital Photo class that Reiner had railed his ass like six times over the Thanksgiving weekend and that he was awfully sore. Indeed, he noticed that Armin kept shifting in his chair, couldn’t sit still in one position for long, but six times seemed like an exaggeration even in Eren’s fevered, hormonally-crazed mind. “So what do you think about my idea? It’s killer, right? Say you’ll do it with me!” Eren gazed back at his computer screen. He was supposed to be working on his final assignment before break—a series of images mimicking John Baldessari’s conceptual photograph _Wrong_ —but instead he was watching an old SHINee music video on YouTube. “I just have to get three more people, but even if it’s just you and me, I think we can pull it off.”

Armin finally tore his eyes away from his own computer screen with its photo collage, à la Robert Heinecken, of a naked Reiner and snorted, “ _Lucifer_? Are you out of your freaking mind? You can’t even do the Chicken Dance, much less move like _that_.” 

“Okay, how about this then?” Eren clicked on an even older TVXQ music video instead.

“ _Mirotic_? Jesus Christ! You need to pick something _easier_ , not harder.”

Eren pounded his desk in frustration. “But it’s gotta be super sexy. That’s the whole point. I’ve gotta melt a few ovaries.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re not going to melt any ovaries trying to dance like that. You’re going to break your own neck.”

“No I’m not. Not if we practice. Oh, c’mon, Armin. Help me out.” Eren slumped in his seat and groaned miserably. “You don’t understand. Everyone’s getting laid except me. You’ve got an ass full of cum—”

“We used rubbers,” Armin clarified.

“—and even Mikasa…that pussy eating bitch! How can she be getting laid if I’m not?”

“This isn’t a contest, Eren,” Armin tsk-tsked.

“Yes it fucking IS! Mikasa says I’m gonna die a virgin and…” Eren slapped his hands over his eyes, throat constricting. God, he really thought he was going to start bawling. Was he getting his period or something? He felt a tap on his shoulder.

“I’ll help you,” Marco offered. He was sitting at the workstation on the other side of Eren and had been listening to the entire conversation. “I can dance, too. My mom thinks I’m pretty good, and Father Nicholas says I’ve got smooth moves, the kind that can make an older man lust after a boy.” 

That last part stunned Eren into momentary silence. Just what kind of dancing was Marco doing for Father Nicholas? Some kind of lap dance, probably. “Uh…that’s not really what I’m after, but…” Under normal circumstances, Eren would have never even considered accepting Marco’s assistance. Granted, Marco was nice if one overlooked his future potential as a serial molester, but he was always hanging around Jean, and Eren did _not_ get along with Jean at all…

“And I could ask Jean, too, if you need more people,” Marco said with an innocent smile. “I’ll be plowing his field soon, so I’m pretty sure he’ll say ‘yes’ if I ask.” He poked his head around Eren and winked at Armin, who gave him the thumbs up.

Why did Marco have to be so fucking helpful in the most unhelpful way? And then, out of guilt, Armin decided to jump into the fray, saying, “Fine, I’ll do it. And I’ll ask Reiner. If he sucks, then at least you won’t be the only one making a gigantic ass out of yourself.” 

And with that, Eren’s spirits took flight, soaring high in the sky like an eagle on a hot draught of joy. It didn’t matter that he’d have two dirtbags he couldn’t stand on his dance team—Reiner and Jean—and two perverts he actually liked—Armin and Marco—because he’d need them if he was going to blow everyone’s minds with his own smooth moves. In History class earlier in the semester, he’d learned about Ancient Greece: Homer, Aristotle, the Peloponnesian War, Athens, Sparta and how their army was so strong because the soldiers were comprised of lovers who would fight to the death for each other’s honor. Reiner and Jean might not give a shit about him, but they wouldn’t want to let their fucking boyfriends down, so there it was. Eren would have his little army of Spartan soldiers dancing their asses off while he stood tall as their leader. Yeah, he’d be that swarthy, bare-chested Spartan dude with the thick thighs and ripped abs in that movie _300_ , the hunky guy that made all the ladies _wet_. 

“That was the _Theban_ army that was made up of lovers, not the one from Sparta,” Armin said when Eren started rambling about the movie and how he was going to be the King Leonidas of dance.

“Huh,” Eren muttered, “so that’s why I failed that quiz.”

***

They ended up practicing each day after school in Marco’s basement because it had mirrored walls. Marco’s older brothers had used it as a weight training room when they had lived at home, but now his mother and aunts used it to brush up on various line dances; there was always a wedding to attend and they liked to be up on all the latest ones. Marco would often practice with them and he had been modest when he had told Eren that he was a good dancer. In fact, he was fabulous, so fabulous that he made Eren look like he had not two, but three left feet. Football season was over for Reiner, so he had no excuse _not_ to show up—that and the fact that Armin had threatened to put a moratorium on sex if he refused—but he was surprisingly adept at mastering the steps, if not stiffly robotic. Jean was also quick to learn and watching Marco nail a sushi roll was incentive enough to keep up. Armin…well, Armin was a _natural_ , tearing up the linoleum floor like he was Michael Jackson come back from the grave, all blond and gloriously girlie.

After two weeks, everyone had pretty much gotten as far as they ever would in memorizing the complicated dance moves. Eren had insisted on SHINee’s _Lucifer_ because he was super confident and ambitious and, well, needless to say, they didn’t win the contest or even finish their routine. Eren _did_ succeed in giving Armin a black eye when he accidentally punched him in the face with an overly enthusiastic fist-in-the-air gesture, which prompted Reiner to take an angry reactionary swing at Eren, which sent him flying onto the gym floor, where they proceeded to wrestle, Reiner on top of a prone Eren, Eren’s legs wrapped around Reiner’s waist as they each sought to overpower the other, and then the crowd of teens began chanting like crazy because it was the closest thing to a public display of intercourse that they were ever going to see. Finally, after a good fifteen minutes of what looked like Reiner humping Eren, Erwin and Levi pulled the two apart.

To Eren’s great chagrin, no one stepped forth to claim him with a shower of kisses and praise. In fact, he was pretty sure his status as ‘untouchable’ had increased exponentially rather than decreased. He was shoved aside as everyone turned their attention to the dance floor to watch Sasha and Connie doing the Hot Potato as if they were an old married couple. Sasha and Connie? When the fuck did _that_ happen? Eren shuffled—like a dejected Charlie Brown—to the far side of the gym where Hange was holding a towel full of ice to Armin’s bruised cheekbone. “Hey, Armin," Eren called out glumly, "sorry about that.”

“Sorry?” came Reiner’s voice in a deadly rumble over his shoulder. Eren jerked his head to the right just in time to see Reiner’s fist looming like a five-knuckled thundercloud filling his frame of vision. “ _This_ is what sorry looks like, you green-eyed motherfucker!”

Eren crumpled, the floor coming up to meet him, heat exploding in his skull and a strange noise ringing in his ears. The next thing he knew, he was on his back, people chattering around him. He brought a hand up to gingerly touch his face. Was his nose broken? Had he blacked out? Taylor Swift’s _Shake It Off_ was blasting over the speakers, which meant that Krista and Ymir were doing their thing on the dance floor.

“That was fucking awesome.”

Eren looked up to see Levi standing over him, grinning openly, sipping on a plastic cup with Erwin next to him. “We should have let them go at it a little longer,” Levi said to Erwin, as if Eren weren’t even conscious. “Pretty sure Jaeger was loving it.”

Erwin’s brilliant blue eyes were flashing with excitement as he reached for the cup, his fingers brushing hot against Levi’s. “Loving it, eh? Maybe I’ll pin you down on the mat later on. Would you like that?”

Levi whispered something to Erwin in reply, and then the two men walked away without giving him a second glance, as if he were nothing more than roadkill. This couldn’t be happening, Eren thought. All of this was just a bad dream, it had to be. Could he really have given Armin a black eye, and then gotten one in return, all in the space of a few minutes? Could the teachers who were supposed to be looking out for them really be enjoying the beatdown he just received from Reiner? And what about Marco? Did he abandon him, too, so he could go plow Jean's field in some dark corner of the locker room? And where the hell was Mikasa? Why wasn’t she helping him when he actually needed her to…

“Get up, you idiot.”

He didn’t bother to open his eyes this time, letting Mikasa pull him off the floor like a ragdoll and help him to his feet. Annie was smirking full-on beside her but had the decency to keep silent. “Take me home, sis,” Eren mumbled in defeat. “I give up.”

________

This chapter was inspired by SHINee’s song, _Lucifer_ , an oldie but goodie from way back when:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dww9UjJ4Dt8>

and by a fanmade animation based on the original music video, which can be seen here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOTkhcxetoA>

In the animation, Eren is Minho, Armin is Taemin, Jean is Key, Erwin is Onew, and Levi is the lovely Jonghyun, who left this mortal coil in December 2017. (RIP Jonghyun, you beautiful, sweet soul.)

If you want to see what the choreography for _Lucifer_ is like without editing, hair, makeup, etc., then check out this practice session by the SHINee guys (Taemin's black-and-white striped shirt is enough to make you cross-eyed):

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovztfpWPo5M>

This chapter also mentions TVXQ’s song _Mirotic_. The dance version of the video can be seen here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_2yfWPZWJI>

Nosebleed Alert: watching it can make a girl pregnant; it might even make a boy pregnant. Yeah, fair warning.

Lastly, I think actor Michael Cera nails the Charlie Brown sad walk in _Arrested Development._ Check it out here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oabcM9SOF-E> 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie and Mikasa both come to certain conclusions. Jean and Marco reach their own epiphany.

Annie stood outside in the parking lot with Mikasa and Eren while they waited for Mrs. Jaeger to pick them up. It was cold enough to see one’s breath in the night air and Annie could swear that Eren looked like a freaking chimney stack from all the pathetic moans and groans emanating from his flapping mouth.

“Is my face all ruined?” he whined, tilting his chin up so Mikasa could examine him under the street light. “It’s my best feature, you know, my face. They broke the mold when they made—” 

“Oh, shut your pie hole,” Annie interrupted. “Is he always like this?” she asked Mikasa. “Maybe we should finish the job for Reiner.” The truth was, Eren’s left cheek was badly bruised and already starting to swell and turn a nauseating shade of green and purple. It made Annie feel a twinge of jealousy. Reiner was such a Neanderthal, but she wouldn’t have minded being the one to have fed Eren that knuckle sandwich. If it were her, she would have followed it up with a knee to the nuts for good measure. And now, seeing Eren milk the injury for Mikasa’s sympathy…well, fuck it if she didn’t want to slap the living shit out of him! It hadn’t bothered her to endure all his snide comments about lesbo this and lesbo that because Eren was an unvarnished fool and his opinion didn’t matter a whit to her, but now the bastard was trying to pluck Mikasa’s heartstrings when all he had ever done before was call her a dumb bitch and worse. “Don’t tell me you actually feel sorry for this turd.”

“She’s _my_ sister, Annie,” Eren sneered. “Go get your own.”

That was enough to make Mikasa suck in a horrified breath. “Oh my god, Eren. Your Dad better check you for brain damage.” She knew he was only saying it to push Annie’s buttons, but hearing him call her his ‘sister’ for the second time in the space of two months had a strange way of making her take pity on him. Eren was never going to succeed on his own, was he? She imagined that fifty years later he’d still be a virgin: untouched, unloved, unwanted. Who would help him, if not her? Who would extend a kind hand, protect him from his own stupidity, if not her? Eren’s parents had taken her in when her own parents had died six years ago and even though she had never thought of Eren as her brother, she had done her best to treat him like one out of respect for Dr. and Mrs. Jaeger. She owed it to them and to the memory of her own parents who had loved her dearly and were forever gone from her. To have a family again was a gift and she wouldn’t squander it even if Eren had made it a challenge at times. The simple fact was she felt closer to Armin, got along with him just fine while her relationship with Eren had only become more antagonistic through the years. When they both hit puberty, what had been infrequent skirmishes between them had morphed into open battles and now it seemed they were fighting a war of attrition like a couple on the verge of a bitter divorce, each of them dug in, giving tit for tat, refusing to cede ground. How would it end? Even the most drawn out wars ended eventually, didn’t they? And besides, she had Annie to think of, Annie to share affection and good times and maybe even something more meaningful, something bordering on love and commitment, and that meant jettisoning this dead weight that was Eren. Christ, why did that make her feel so guilty?

Annie must have said something cutting too close to the bone because Eren was now lobbing some invective right back at her in retaliation.

“Fuck you, Annie! No one would even notice if your ugly mug fell off! _This_ ,” Eren declared, pointing to his head, “is a work of _art_.”

At that, Annie let out a loud roar of laughter, no small feat since getting even a stifled tee-hee out of her was like squeezing water from a stone. “Holy shit! _Art_? You mean like one of those Picasso portraits with the fucked-up features?” She slapped her thighs, overcome with giggles; Eren was just so good at bringing out all her sadistic inclinations, even ones she didn’t know she had. She vaguely wondered what Mikasa really thought about Eren, if she enjoyed putting Eren in his place, was tempted to kick his ass for pure fun. Yeah, he’d make a good punching bag and, yeah, she’d have to have a nice chat with Mikasa about how to make Eren show them the respect they deserved. When Mrs. Jaeger pulled up in the car and asked her if she wanted a lift home, Annie declined, saying she would stay at the dance a little longer. She squeezed Mikasa’s hand discreetly, and then went to join Connie and Sasha under the bleachers, where she knew they’d be getting high along with all the other stoners. She needed to do some heavy thinking and pot always freed up her mind. Christmas was coming and she was beginning to formulate an idea of what to get Mikasa for a present. But first, she’d need to talk to Armin and pick his pervy brains.

***

The way Father Nicholas explained things just made a whole lot of sense to Marco. “A priest must be well-versed in all things, both good and evil, in order to truly help his flock, in order to have empathy for his little lambs.” Good. Evil. Lambs. Check, check, and check. “The confessional is a sacred space, one where all manner of sins is revealed. A priest must be able to bear the deepest depravities with unwavering fortitude. There is only one way to prepare for such a burden: experience.” Sins. Depravities. Experience. Check, check, and check. Yeah, Marco had it all covered thanks to Father Nicholas. He was going to be a terrific priest one day. In the meantime, he was going to get a jump on the basics of Priesthood 101 with Jean: the sinning and depraving and experiencing. Check, check, and check!

Marco’s house was within walking distance from the high school and after the wrestling match between Reiner and Eren broke out, it seemed pointless to stay for the rest of the dance. They weren’t going to win the prize—a faux gold trophy and gift cards to Applebee’s—so Marco invited Jean to spend the rest of the evening at his place. Jean’s parents were out at a holiday party and so were Marco’s parents and they had a few more hours to kill until Jean, who lived on the outskirts of town, could be driven home. In another year, Marco would be seventeen, and then he could get a license, which meant _he_ could be the one driving Jean around and…also…they could park somewhere and make out in the car like his Nonno and Nonna used to do in the old days, groping and kissing and giving each other hickeys, what they used to call ‘petting’ or ‘necking’ and, well, he couldn’t wait to pet and neck the shit out of Jean, as well as other things, the kinds of things Father Nicholas had shown him when he was giving him his private lessons on good and evil in the rectory.

“Want to play video games at my house?” Marco proposed. “I have the latest _Tomb Raider_.” Marco knew that Jean was probably still crushing on Mikasa and, even though Lara Croft didn’t look much like Mikasa, they both had nice tits and dark hair and that tenuous resemblance would be enough to get Jean in the mood for sure. If not, Marco also had some E sitting in his nightstand that Armin had given him earlier to aid in any potential seduction.

“Sure,” Jean said, “although, I’m kind of sweaty.” The gym was dimly lit by the corner in which they were standing and Jean was grateful; he was sure he was blushing and not just because he was overheated from their abbreviated dance routine. He had sweated plenty of times in front of Marco—they had gym class together, for Christ’s sake—but ever since Thanksgiving, things had gotten weird for Jean, as in kinky. The locker room had taken on a new illicit aura, maybe because they had jacked it in one of the bathroom stalls together, and showered next to each other and managed to rub another one out without their classmates noticing. Who the fuck knows? Maybe they _did_ notice but were too appalled to say anything; either way, the feel of sweat on his body, the smell of it, things Jean had abhorred in the past, were starting to turn him on in the most inconvenient ways. That and the feel of Marco’s tie—between his thighs, wrapped around his dick, around his neck, stuffed into his mouth—were enough to give him the most intense orgasms. When had he turned into such a freak? And then Marco suggested something he just wouldn’t be able to say no to:

“Do you want to shower in the locker room?”

Jean’s eyes widened into saucers. “You mean like…right _now_?” As if any other time would be better!

“C’mon.” Marco grabbed Jean’s wrist and pulled him around the corner and into the boys’ locker room, the music thumping dully through the concrete walls. Jean was trying to wriggle out of his grasp, but Marco gripped him harder and laughed, “Don’t worry. If anyone comes in, we’re just taking a shower, right? It’s not a crime.”

“But—” Jean’s feeble protest was cut off with a kiss, a hot sweaty kiss and Jean could taste the salt on Marco’s upper lip, could smell his musky scent and all he could do was let Marco press him against the lockers with a metallic thud and moan when he felt Marco’s erection grinding against his own through their pants. “Ngh…god…” He wished he had Marco’s tie with him right now, but it was at home tucked safely inside his pillowcase, not that he was going to need it to get off; the way Marco was fondling him—one hand palming his cock, the other snaked up his shirt and pinching a nipple—was bringing him close to the edge.

Marco broke their kiss and said, all breathy against Jean’s ear, “Don’t cum yet. Get undressed. We’re doing it in the shower.”

“D-Doing it?” What was that supposed to mean? Weren’t they ‘doing it’ right now? Jean swallowed thickly and started stripping out of his clothes. He wasn’t shy about being naked in front of Marco but that other thing he said… “You want to jack it in the shower, right?”

That elicited another laugh from Marco, who impatiently yanked Jean’s pants down. “You are so fucking cute, Jean. Like a little lamb. My sweet, innocent lamb.”

It was undeniably thrilling and Jean was trembling with arousal, knees weak, gulping in quick, stuttering breaths laden with fear and excitement. Marco had him facing the tiled wall as the hot water sluiced over their naked bodies, legs spread, ass cheeks parted, an eager tongue lapping at his quivering hole. Jean had never done anything so _dirty_. Mon dieu, if his mother saw him now, what would she say? What would she do? Probably disown him. His father, too, would disown him. His parents would hightail it back to France and leave him to rot in a foreign wasteland while they dined on champagne and fois gras, saying ‘good riddance’ to that good-for-nothing pervert of a son. He was raised Catholic, so was Marco, so why was he feeling so filthy when Marco obviously felt the complete opposite?

“Marco…don’t…no more….” Jean pleaded.  What a liar he was! It felt so good, too good to be real, and when Marco stopped, Jean missed his tongue the way one missed _oxygen_ when it was taken away suddenly. Marco, though, stood up and replaced his tongue with a soapy finger.

“Just relax,” Marco whispered into Jean’s ear. “I’m going to make it so good for you.” He pushed his finger in slowly, gently, listening to Jean’s moans echoing in the shower room. It was like the most beautiful aria, as beautiful as Puccini’s Nessun Dorma from Turandot, his Nonno’s favorite opera which Marco had grown up listening to on almost a daily basis. “Sing for me, my little lamb. Cry for me.” He soaped up his cock and lined up, put his mouth on Jean’s shoulder and nipped into the flesh as he pushed in. “Don’t ever forget this,” Marco murmured against Jean’s cheek. “Stasera ti vinco.”

 

__________

Stasera ti vinco = Tonight I win you [a play on the last lines sung in Nessun Dorma: I will win! I will win!]

Nessun Dorma, an aria from Puccini's opera Turandot, is meant to be sung by a tenor, that is, the aria was written to be sung by a man. However, the most beautiful rendition I've ever heard was sung by a girl: Jackie Evancho, whose older brother eventually came out as female. A number of Jackie's "fans" turned on her after she supported her brother in his decision. As Taylor Swift sung so eloquently: "Haters gonna hate," so fuck 'em.

Check out Jackie singing Nessun Dorma here:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csjIrNbAtEA>

Try not to cry.

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Annie and Mikasa exchange Christmas presents.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very brief but horrific flashback of outright, unglorified rape is in this chapter. PLEASE mind the trigger warning.

The storefront window featured a fairly tasteless display of wigless mannequins kitted out in lacy lingerie and fuck-me pumps, the kind of standard shit a wife would wear for her husband on their wedding anniversary to celebrate yet another year of marital servitude or to liven up sex gone staler than month-old bread or both. Even the name of the shop—hand painted in black Gothic lettering across the window—was a rather contradictory tease: Aphrodites Kleiderschrank. The heck? Might as well be called Venus’s Creepy Boudoir, especially when said aloud…Aphrodites Kleiderschrank…it rolled off the tongue like a coarse expletive. 

“Don’t worry,” assured Armin with confidence. “You know how they say that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover?” He swung the door open, a canned air raid siren signaling their arrival, and held it open for Annie to step in through the threshold first. 

Not surprisingly, Annie gulped an uncharacteristic knot of fear down her throat as she entered the shop. “And what book is that?” she muttered at her shoes. “ _Mein Kampf_?” Inside, the store was darkly lit with black lights, which was puzzling until Annie looked up and saw all the UV paintings of naked vixens with huge tits and ripped Tom of Finland-type dudes sporting humungous dicks hung on the walls next to more mannequins—male and female—wearing much racier outfits which glowed like porny come-ons, as enticing as the hookers on display in their little glass-fronted rooms in Amsterdam’s famous red light district. What had she gotten herself into? And why was her heart racing with excitement? 

Asking for advice was not Annie’s usual M.O., but she felt out of her comfort zone when it came to interpersonal relations, especially if it involved skin-on-skin contact that was romantic in nature rather than the uncomplicated physical violence sanctioned in sports. She hadn’t even imagined that the two could be mixed and mingled together until she had her little tête-à-tête with Armin. Boy oh boy, did he open her eyes. After Mrs. Jaeger had driven off with Mikasa and Eren the night of the dance, Annie had texted Armin to meet her for a chat under the bleachers.

“The violence in sports is all about the sublimation and redirection of sexual energy,” Armin had told her, ever the diminutive scholar. He passed the joint back to her after sucking in a drag. “Why do you think Reiner’s always hot to trot? All that aggression on the field, all those bodies slamming together, all that ass-slapping? Those guys just want to fuck each other, but instead, they beat each other up on the field, and then they go beat off in the shower afterwards. By the way, you do know that Bertolt is still creaming his pants for you, don't you?”

“Bertolt?” Annie was already high and not concerned about Bertolt. She was thinking instead about Mikasa and body slamming her sweet ass, things she really couldn’t do on the field because they played on the same squad. But she had let Mikasa pin her down on the bed after Thanksgiving dinner and that had been so very good, the way Mikasa had ground her into the mattress, held her down and kissed her, sucked on her nipples, and licked a wet stripe all the way down to her dripping pussy, where she had used her tongue on her in the most incredible way. Then Mikasa had put her fingers inside her, twisted and curled them until Annie had thought she would writhe out of her very own skin, and yet…she had wanted more. Even after she had done all those same things to Mikasa, she had wanted more. And that’s what she wanted to talk to Armin about, the _more_ of it. Armin’s reputation was well-known around school—even she had watched his YouTube video and puked afterwards—and she knew how close Mikasa was to him. They were best friends, Mikasa and Armin, and if Armin was good enough for Mikasa, then he was good enough for Annie, too. Good enough to trust with some advice, at least.

Armin had listened to Annie tell him what she and Mikasa had done, and he had merely nodded, taking mental notes. The truth was, Mikasa had already told him everything they had done and he had to stifle a giggle because it was just too amusing in its irony. The two girls were both gunning for the same thing: they both wanted to top the other, they both wanted to be the alpha bitch, they both wanted to be the one swinging the big stick. This was going to be fun. So he told Annie the very same thing he had told Mikasa days earlier, “I know just the thing for you to get her for Christmas.”

Then Reiner had come to fetch him for some sexy times, barking, “Armin, let’s go to your house so I can fuck your brains out!” and Armin had left with a friendly wave of his hand, calling out to Annie, “I’ll text you the details!”

And now Annie found herself standing red faced with embarrassment in Aphrodites Kleiderschrank and being queried by the shopkeeper, a heavily made-up silver-haired woman stuffed like a sausage into a black leather jumpsuit studded with spikes and wearing huge tortoiseshell cat-eye glasses. Armin apparently knew this woman because he greeted her politely as ‘Frau Klimt’ and mercifully did all the talking for Annie. “We’re here to look at the strap-ons,” Armin told the lady, his voice bubbling over with _das Weihnachten_ cheer.

“Ach, ja? Noch einmal?” Frau Klimt peered down her nose at Annie and let out a clucking sound. “What a tiny one we have here.” Then she smiled with approval. “But the littlest are often the fiercest, habe ich recht? Komm mit mir!”

Annie’s family was of German stock and she was used to being ordered around by her father in their native tongue but, regardless, the whole situation made her want to run for cover, even if it was from her own kind. Once again, Armin stepped up to the plate for her, grabbing her hand and pulling her along behind Frau Klimt as she ordered "Schnell!" and  clomp-clomped in her thigh-high boots to a shelf displaying all manner of harnesses to be worn around the waist and another shelf with all the various dildos that could be fitted into the harnesses. Annie couldn’t believe what she was seeing…so many shapes and sizes and colors and textures and Jesus Christ why was her mouth hanging open?

“Just take your time, Annie. There’s no need to hurry,” Armin chirped. “It took me hours to decide on the lubes.”

There was no way Annie was going to spend hours in this place, this orgiastic heaven on earth, and yet, as Frau Klimt pulled various items off the shelf and then took her into the dressing room and had her strip down to her panties, then had her step into the harnesses so she could adjust the straps, turning her body this way and that as if she were one of the window mannequins, the day took on a surreal feel. She was no longer in her body, she was floating outside of it, a mere bystander, a voyeur in this ludicrous play unfolding before her blinkered eyes. Frau Klimt was rattling on about the pros and cons of leather versus rubber, of thick versus thin, of long versus short, of vibrating versus textured, and the world seemed to expand like a balloon filling with hot air, the possibilities tumbling forth in an endless wave of carnal delights. A door had opened into a new room and that room was calling to her, saying, “Come play, Annie. And bring your friends.”

***

She texted Mikasa on Christmas day with a short message: _can u come over later? my dad will be at work. I have something for u_

In less than thirty seconds, she received a reply: _yes! I have something for u 2!_

The doorbell rang at six-thirty in the evening and Annie breathed a sigh of elation. She hated Christmas. Christmas meant her father would be home from work during the day and he was a right old grumpy bastard, a cop who looked at the world with suspicion, a man who insisted that his daughter be trained to fend off would-be rapists and that meant _everyone_.

“Trust no one, little girl,” he had told her since as far back as she could remember. “They’re all out to get you.”

“Is that why Mom left you?” Annie had always wanted to ask her father that question, but had never had the guts. The years of his bitter drinking that had followed her mother’s departure had made her realize that she had been right never to have asked him that question. She would have earned a punch in the face if she had. Instead, there had been mandatory karate lessons, tae kwon do lessons, jujutsu lessons, all to protect her from the ‘enemy’ lurking in the dark. But no one had told her that the _real_ enemy was living under her own roof and when her father had come into her room late one night, stinking of booze and fury, she hadn’t fought back. She had been paralyzed with her own disbelief because who could she trust if not her father, the man who had trained her to be strong? She could only be weak in his presence. So she had let him have his way with her and it had been horrible, so horrible she could only lay still and endure the pain of it all. Afterwards she would be dead, she told herself. She would be dead and it would all be over with. She wouldn’t have to endure it any longer, wouldn't have to feel a thing.

The problem was, she didn’t die. Her father had pulled out and finished on her belly and then sheepishly cleaned her up with a handkerchief while she lay shaking with mute tears. That was two years ago when she was fourteen years old and he had never touched her again, never even looked her in the eye. He spent his evenings at the station working the night shift so he wouldn’t have to see her. It made her life easier. There was always food in the fridge, money left on the kitchen table. He was a ghost and she was glad for it. If she needed something, she wrote it on a piece of paper and left it clipped onto the magnet on the fridge. Needed item was on the kitchen table the next day when she got home from school. He was always home on Christmas morning, though, when he had a day off. He would sit in the living room chain smoking, a present on his lap. They didn’t put up a tree. They hadn’t ever since her mother had left all those years ago, but he still got her a present each year. This year, he had gotten her another cashmere sweater.

“Your mother always loved cashmere,” he said, the only words he had spoken to her since the Christmas before, when he had gotten her the same thing, uttered the same words.

“Thanks,” she replied. Then she took it upstairs and tried it on in front of the mirror hanging on the back of her bedroom door. It was pink and it looked lovely on her. Then she had texted Mikasa.

Mikasa was smiling when Annie opened the door, a gift wrapped in gold foil held in her hands. “Merry Christmas,” Mikasa said. “Pink looks good on you.”

They opened their gifts in Annie’s room and fell apart laughing. They had each given the other the same thing: strap-on dildos with harnesses.

“Don’t tell me you talked to Armin,” Mikasa giggled. The grin on Annie’s face told her that she had. “I guess we’ll have to thank Armin at some point.” Then she leaned over and kissed Annie, a soft peck on the lips that deepened into something passionate as Annie carded her fingers through Mikasa’s hair. Things got hot and heavy _fast_. Annie’s father was at the station for his shift and for once there was no Eren to contend with like an unwelcome third wheel throwing them off-course. There was just the two of them…and their Christmas presents. “Should we try them on?” asked Mikasa.

“Yeah,” Annie said. “These suckers need to be broken in.”

It took a while to get the harnesses on and adjusted. Goddamn it. It seemed so much easier when Frau Klimt was fitting them but after some struggle they had the silly things on, dildos slotted in place and…they broke into raucous laughter, pointing at each other and cracking up like it was nobody’s business.

“Holy shit!” Annie shrieked. “I’m gonna pee myself!”

Mikasa was doubled over, beside herself. “Oh god! I can’t believe… I mean…look at my _dick_!” She gripped the dildo in her fist and stroked it lovingly. “Come to me, baby,” she mumbled in a low octave, putting on a mask of mock seriousness. “Come to daddy.”

And in that moment, all the terror of the last few years left Annie. _Come to daddy_. Those words should have rendered her helpless with fear, but instead it freed her at last, because it was Mikasa saying those words, Mikasa who would never hurt her, Mikasa who would only love her, Mikasa who touched and kissed her the way she needed to be touched and kissed. So she lay beneath her, let Mikasa spread her thighs and enter her and this time, it didn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt at all.

***

They were startled by the doorbell ringing. Shit. What time was it? Annie looked at the clock on her nightstand. Only eight-thirty. Who the hell would be ringing the doorbell at eight-thirty in the evening? She quickly wriggled out of the harness and threw on some clothes. _Oh, god, please don’t be home, Dad_. But it wasn’t her father. It was only Eren.

“Is Mikasa still here?” he asked. “My parents want me to walk her home.”

Then, Annie got an idea.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aphrodites Kleiderschrank translates roughly to Aphrodite's Closet.


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eren gets bitch-slapped and double-teamed by Mikasa and Annie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight dub-con and overt sexist language. Please mind the warning and new tags. If you can’t stand the heat, then kindly leave the kitchen.

“Loser alert,” Annie announced in a monotone. She stood blocking the doorway to her bedroom while Eren craned his neck behind her. He thought he had caught a glimpse of some bare skin, something for which every teenage boy was on the lookout, and he wanted to see more. Mikasa quickly pulled the bed sheet up around her naked body, horrified and ready to scream bloody murder, but Annie’s pale grey eyes flashing with devilish intent made her pause. The strap-on dildo Mikasa was still wearing tented the sheet in front of her like a morning woody shouting a hearty, “Hi there!”

Eren was struck dumb as a rock by the eyeful he was getting over Annie’s shoulder. He’d been giving the girls endless shit about their supposed lesbian activities without having any solid evidence, but now that the irrefutable proof was right in front of him, he simply couldn’t wrap his head around the reality of it. “Mikasa? What the fuck? Are you…th’ fuck are you doing? What is…?  Are you guys…? Jesus fucking Christ! I’m gonna…” Eren stammered and stuttered, sentences left hanging, his voice straining higher and higher as the breakers in his overloaded brain tripped one by one.

Meanwhile, Annie kept blocking the doorway with her body, feet planted wide and arms outstretched so he couldn’t get past her without knocking her down. There was zero chance of that happening. Annie was small but strong for her five-foot frame and she knew Eren wouldn’t be able to push her aside unless she let him. She shot Mikasa a steamy glance, licked her lips suggestively and Mikasa got the message. So this was it. This was their chance to put Eren in his place, teach him a lesson on proper submission. Reiner had given them a tiny taste of what they were capable of as angels of retribution, and it was only that very same evening—after they had gotten each other off—that they had ‘discussed’ what they wanted to do to Eren, giggling and getting wet all over again at the possibilities. And now it was staring Mikasa in the face; those green eyes were wide with weakness and his vulnerability made the alpha bitch in her _howl_ for righteous satisfaction.

“What do you think I’m doing?” Mikasa asked, all innocence. She let the bed sheet fall, revealing her bare breasts, firm and full, pink-nippled and creamy-skinned. “Why don’t you come over here, _brother_?”

Eren actually squeaked, like a startled mouse, and it was only Annie’s disgusted scowl that prevented Mikasa from losing herself in hysterics. This was going to be so fucking fun…feeding Eren all the crap that he’d been dishing out to them for weeks. Yeah, they were going to make him _eat_ it.

“I’ll bet he’s popped a boner,” Annie smirked. She sauntered over to the bed and stood next to Mikasa, crossing her arms over her chest in mock boredom. “Go on, Eren. Show us your big bad wiener.” Eren remained frozen in the doorway, paralyzed by arousal, confusion, shock. “Well? Whip it out, little boy. Let’s see it. Or do we need a magnifying glass?”

“I…uh…” He felt like crying. This was all so scary and way more titillating than his most heated, filthy spank bank scenarios involving multiple hot Victoria's Secret models loving on him—god knows he had a shitload of those fantasies that he had replayed countless times in his mind—but NONE of them had been like THIS. “I’m gonna tell Mom!” he blurted out in self-defense. Oh, shit! Why the fuck did he just say that? What was wrong with him?

“What is wrong with you?” That was Mikasa echoing his own thoughts, only she sounded _pissed_. “Chickening out now? Your mouth has been way bigger than your dick. Fine. I’ll show you mine first.” And with that, she tossed the sheet aside and rose off the bed in all her naked glory, dildo waving in the air in front of her like a lethal weapon. She stalked over to where he was still standing in the doorway, took hold of the red scarf around his neck and yanked him into the room and onto the floor. “Take your clothes off, _bitch_.”

He must have heard wrong as he lay ungracefully sprawled and spread-eagled, but he was speedily divested of that misconception when Mikasa put her foot on the back of his neck and mashed his face into the carpet. “Are you hard of hearing, Eren, or are you too stupid to understand plain English? Do I need to wipe your ass for you when you take a dump? _I said take your fucking clothes off!_ ”

She couldn’t be serious, thought Eren. This was Mikasa, demur, sweet, soft-spoken Mikasa…who was this sexy evil twin? He felt someone reach under and between his legs to give him a nut-crushing handshake.  Who did that? Mikasa? Annie? He couldn’t see, could only breathe in carpet dust and Oreo crumbs. “Fuck! Not my balls again!” Eren shrieked. “Okay! Okay! I’ll do it! Let me up!”

The foot came off his neck and he got up unsteadily and started unzipping his winter coat, coughing and gasping. His bottom lip was trembling all on its own.

“Are you going to cry? Are you a baby?”

Oh, sweet Jesus. That was Annie, and she was stripping out of her sweatpants and hoodie and reaching for a tangle of straps on the floor…a harness that had a dildo slotted into it, just like the one Mikasa was wearing. Oh, god, no. But…maybe…yes? Eren toed off his shoes, watching her gear up with nervous fascination. He wriggled out of his sweater and jeans and stood cowering in his briefs and socks under two pairs of unforgiving eyes, dildos pointed right at his own groin as if he were a death row inmate before the firing squad. Shouldn't they offer him a cigarette or something? Where was the priest to read him his last rites?

“Take it all off, you little cunt,” ordered Mikasa, “and don’t make me ask twice.”

There was a moment of hesitation, a moment of hope that fizzled and died, and then Eren reluctantly shoved his briefs down. They lay pooled at his ankles before he toed his socks off, kicking everything aside in a sorry puddle at his feet.

Annie chortled at the sight of his erection. “He’s hard for us, babe.” She stepped forward and batted it with her dildo, then moved behind him, rubbing the dildo between his buttocks. “Too bad his schlong isn't long enough for him to fuck himself with it. Should we help him?” She locked eyes with Mikasa, whose nipples were standing at attention.

“Get on your hands and knees, you little prick,” Mikasa instructed, her lips curled into an unfriendly sneer, “and don’t resist if you know what’s good for you.”

Annie walked over to the small vanity table under the window and took a large hairbrush and a small jar of Vaseline out of the drawer. Eren had watched enough kinky porn to know what Annie might do to him. Half of him wanted to fight her, the other half wanted to spread his own ass cheeks for her. So many choices! What to do? But before he could give it another thought, Mikasa was stuffing his briefs in his mouth and wrapping her bra around his face as a makeshift gag so he couldn’t talk. Oh my fucking god, did his dick just get harder?

“You’re long overdue for a lesson, you pompous piece of shit.”

He recognized Annie’s voice behind him, and then he felt the first whack of the flat of the hairbrush across his bare buttocks. He flinched and yelped into his still-warm underwear. By the tenth whack, he was screaming and crying tears of agonizing bliss. Through his pain-addled haze, he could hear the two girls assessing the state of his flaming ass cheeks. They must have been satisfied with how raw and red his buttocks were because the spanking stopped and he heard the lid of the Vaseline jar being popped open. Here it comes…god help him.

“Use the handle first,” he heard Mikasa tell Annie. 

“No way. This is my favorite brush,” replied Annie.

“Pretty sure you won’t be brushing your hair with it anymore,” Mikasa reasoned. “I’ll get you a new one.”

Then he heard kissing sounds. He dared a glance over his shoulder to see the two girls playing tag with their tongues and squeezing each other’s tits…so fucking hot…then they caught him looking and stroking himself and Annie smacked him again with the hairbrush. “Fucking Peeping Tom!” she snarled. “And who said you could touch yourself? Greedy pervert!” She turned to Mikasa and acquiesced, “Fine. I’m going in hard with the handle. Heh.” And with that, she greased up the wooden handle of the hairbrush and unceremoniously shoved it up Eren’s ass.

Eren collapsed onto his elbows with a muffled wail of pain, forehead hitting the floor. He would have remained that way, keening as Annie went to town on his virgin hole, but Mikasa was lifting him onto his hands again as she knelt in front of him fisting his hair on either side of his head. “Now the _real_ fun starts,” she told him, slapping him across the face a few times to draw his focus away from his burning ass. She unhooked the bra and removed his spit-soaked briefs, smiling down at him. “Open wide, you filthy little cock slut. I know how much you're craving my dick.” And with that, she shoved the dildo into his mouth and pumped her hips roughly. After listening to him gag and choke, she pulled out and let him gasp in a few shaky breaths before she pressed the dildo to his lips again. “Do it and do it right, you hungry little whore, or I’ll poke your eyes out with it.”

“Yes, Mikasa,” Eren rasped, throat sore already, although not as sore as his ass when Annie plowed into him at the other end with her dildo this time, as if the hairbrush handle weren’t enough to do the job of thoroughly wrecking his ass. His mouth opened in a scream, a scream cut short by Mikasa’s dildo shoved back into his mouth, and then the two girls went to work, fucking him in tandem, fore and aft, until Eren didn’t know what was up or down, right or left, backwards or forwards. He was caught in limbo, suspended between heaven and hell, saved and destroyed by both god and the devil.

***

He’d never imagined his first real sexual experience with another human being would unfold this way, not even in his wildest fantasies, but beggars can’t be choosers and he was going to beg for more as soon as his ass and mouth could take another pummeling. Maybe next time the girls were in the mood for a threesome he’d have them use all that bondage gear Armin had given him for Christmas because _that_ stuff—the choke chains and gags and cuffs and straps and plugs and chastity belts—unlike the amateur hour equipment employed by the girls, was _professional_ grade, the real deal, and Eren was ready to step up to the big leagues like his smug half-brother. Take that, Zeke! Who’s da man now? Eren could swear his own balls were hanging bigger and heavier and (hopefully) hairier than ever. He wasn’t a little boy anymore. No, he’d make good on all his claims of future greatness because the future was HERE, under the fierce glare of two beautiful bitches who had broken him down only to build him back up and make him feel as unstoppable as a titan on the attack in full-on berserker mode. Goddamn if this wasn’t the sweetest kickass Christmas. And the best part of all was that he had proven Mikasa wrong: he wasn’t going to die a virgin after all.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Forgive me. Guess I’ll go to church now.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A joyeux Noël is in store for Jean and Marco. Armin and Reiner spend Christmas with Old Man Arlert and his new love interest.

Sainte Marie de la Rose was jam-packed for midnight mass on Christmas, many of the attendees trashed on celebratory champagne, bellies full of foie gras and fig confit, oysters and smoked salmon, roast goose and venison. For those clinging to time honored tradition, it was all backwards—the dinner _before_ midnight mass rather than after—but these were modern times and so, rather than a church full of starving worshippers, one heard drunken chattering and loud snoring while the liturgy was recited. Jean had no trouble keeping his eyes open, though, even if he was bombed on too many glasses of Sauterne, because Marco was kneeling next to him and pressing the side of his hip into his own and that touch alone was enough to make Jean’s heart beat double time.

Jean’s parents had told him to invite Marco to what they called ‘le réveillon de Noël’ as polite repayment for the Thanksgiving dinner Jean had enjoyed at the Bott residence, and Marco had happily accepted because his own family’s traditional Christmas Eve dinner was just fish and vegetables—food fit for the aged or the devoutly penitent—and he was thrilled to be served the loin of venison instead. Such a treat! He was a growing boy, and he still had plenty of room in his stomach for a Christmas dinner back home _after_ midnight mass, when all his relatives would be gathered together again for another fifteen course meal that would easily put to shame the one served at Thanksgiving.

Just a few hours earlier, while the canapés were being served on Limoges porcelain at Jean’s house, Marco had given him the Christmas present he had worked so diligently to complete. The other guests, all adults who insisted on speaking French with the zealous correctness of a long-gone era—as if they were still in fin-de-siècle Paris and not stuck in a decidedly un-Gallic country and certainly NOT like those _Canadiens_ in Quebec, ice hockey-loving, Country Mouse cousins who mangled the language even worse than the non-French morons in Paradis—were congregated by the tree in the living room, drinking and smoking and exchanging small but tasteful gifts. Jean and Marco hid out in the sunroom, furtively groping on the stuffed wicker loveseat next to the shrine to Alfred Dreyfus, which was decorated with a fragrant garland of woven fir boughs for the holiday. It was with unbridled enthusiasm and a stolen kiss that Marco handed Jean the present wrapped in shiny red, white and green paper.

“You really didn’t have to,” Jean said, as he had been taught to say when given a gift. For his part, he had bought Marco a new tie to replace the one he had kept and stained repeatedly with his own body fluids, a tie with a fleur-de-lis pattern in gold on a blue background. “I hope you didn’t go overboard.” He carefully unwrapped the flat package and, well, it was awful, just…bloody awful, but Jean had been raised to dissemble, to keep his own feelings to himself lest he be perceived as some overly touchy-feely-I-wear-my-fucking-heart-on-my-sleeve-and-take-my-Xanax-because-I-have-no-culture Américain, so he blinked a few more times in bewilderment, struggling and failing to say something even remotely flattering.

“So, do you like it? What do you think?” asked Marco. He was a mile too far into Jean’s personal space, giddy with excitement and grinning from ear to ear. 

Jean slowly flipped through the pages of Marco’s ‘manga’ and tried to keep his face from crumpling. “Well, I…um…I’ll have to read it through. I mean, it seems to be…very…interesting…”

Undeterred by Jean’s blasé reaction, Marco grabbed the stapled pages and explained, “It’s about you and me!” He pointed to a panel with a stick figure sporting a black vest. “You see, that’s you, Jean, and…” Marco flipped a few pages further and pointed again to another stick figure wearing black robes and a gigantic crucifix around his neck, “…and that’s me.” More flipping of pages, and then Marco pointed to a series of panels showing the boy in the vest kneeling before the priest, then kissing the priest’s badass crucifix, then the priest ‘blessing’ the vest-boy with ‘holy water’ from his spurting penis. The very last panel showed the two stick figures walking hand-in-hand as the sun set on the horizon and what looked like Jesus hovering in a spaceship overhead and sending a wide beam of light onto them, ostensibly to suck them up into his UFO. “And that’s us,” Marco said, pointing to the last image with a hope-filled smile, freckles all aglow, “going to heaven, me and you.”

The drawings—more like scrawls made by a blind man—were too childish to even register as insanely disturbing. In fact, they dripped with an achingly sweet naïveté that confused the hell out of Jean and made him want to crawl inside Marco and just freaking die there. He didn’t know what to say about the nutty manga—what with him and the priest and Jesus hauling them off into deep space—but he DID know that he wanted very badly for Marco to mess him up like he had in the boy’s locker room that night of the dance, so he leaned in close and kissed Marco instead, on the lips and with a softness that belied his yearning, and whispered, “I think I love you.”

***

The Arlert residence was uncharacteristically festive this year; Krampus would be skipping their house for sure. They had a tree! And it was decorated! Sort of. Old Man Arlert had chopped down an arborvitae from his neighbor’s backyard and dragged it inside and propped it up with a few two-by-fours in a bucket of water. The columnar evergreen shrub didn’t even drop needles because it had no needles to drop—a plus!—but the lower half was completely bare because the deer had been chewing on it for winter sustenance. 

“More room for presents, eh boy?” Old Man Arlert had declared with a wheezing cough. Then he had sprayed another can of neon green Silly String onto the shrub.

Ten days earlier, Armin had inadvertently left a business card taken from Aphrodites Kleiderschrank on the kitchen table and his grandfather had seen it and was intrigued, so intrigued that he had gone to the shop and not only met Frau Klimt, but started banging her that very same day in the dressing room, the two of them ‘chained’ together with nipple clamps. Between the booze and the Viagra that enabled the vigorous fucking, it would be a miracle if Old Man Arlert made it alive to New Year’s Eve, but that was neither here nor there. It was this new affair that had prompted the celebratory mood in Armin’s grandfather and inspired him to throw a Christmas party to which he invited all his fellow drunkards from the bar, compatriots who didn’t believe that he actually had a lady friend and was having sex at the ripe old age of sixty-eight.

They came in droves. Armin had no idea his grandfather had so many ‘friends’ and from what he could gather, the median age of the guests hovered around eighty if he didn’t count himself or Reiner— who was lured by the prospect of freely flowing liquor—because that would have totally skewed the average. So, basically, the house was teeming with prehistoric widowed men all jealous and salivating for a glimpse of this mythical Frau Klimt.

Frau Klimt did NOT disappoint. At ten o’clock, when the old codgers were beginning to throw empty beer cans at Armin’s grandfather for being a ‘lying old fuck’—Frau Klimt arrived with a flourish, trailing cigarette smoke and wearing an oversized fur hat and, once the leopard print overcoat was tossed aside, a one-piece red rubber outfit trimmed in white like Santa’s not-so-little helper. She now bore an uncanny resemblance to a sausage dipped in crimson paint, a very juicy sausage with generous curves in all the right places, but curves that had succumbed to gravity nevertheless. The geriatric crowd grew silent in awe, and then, by some strange male mode of wordless communication, a collective cheer arose as they swarmed around her like worker bees to their queen, pawing and leering and drooling at her with arthritic approval.

“Holy fuck,” muttered Reiner. He took another swig of the Wild Turkey he’d swiped from the liquor cabinet in the den. “I wonder if this is what it’s like when…” he waved the bottle at the group of clapping and hooting men, “…it's Singles Nite at the nursing home.”

Armin sipped calmly at his spiked eggnog and shrugged his shoulders. They were huddled in the corner by the tree, keeping out of range of flying dentures and the odor of ultra strength Bengay cream. The all-rubber outfit worn by Frau Klimt was worrisome to Armin, though. He hoped the men weren’t planning on engaging in any water sports because at their age, it would take forever for them to dribble out enough piss to make it even worthwhile to watch. And the blue tarp would need to be hauled out of the garage. Frau Klimt spotted Armin across the room and blew him a grandmotherly kiss, then got up on the coffee table and started gyrating stiffly to the strains of Dean Martin crooning, _Baby, it’s cold outside_ … Armin sighed and waved back, nibbling on a reindeer-shaped Christmas cookie. “Oh, look. I bit off Rudolf’s cock.”

It was all standard levels of cringeworthy in the Arlert residence until the men started pulling down their Depend undergarments so Frau Klimt could lash them in turn with a leather bullwhip and Reiner decided he’d witnessed enough senior depravity to last him a lifetime. “Let’s go to your room, Armin. I’m gonna go blind if I have to see what’s coming next.” All those wrinkled flabby asses were bad enough; he didn’t even want to think about what was on the other side of those asses: shriveled balls and limp dicks. Too gross! Plus, the living room was starting to smell like a bus station urinal.

So they went upstairs and laid on Armin’s bed, making out in their clothes and grinding on each other. Reiner was hammered on whiskey and seemed content to just kiss Armin, all wet and sloppy, sucking at his lips, mouthing at his cheeks, his ears, his neck.

“Are we going to fuck or not?” asked Armin. He was only slightly tipsy on eggnog and rum and in the mood for some serious drilling, but Reiner only kissed him harder and tried to stick his tongue down Armin’s throat.

“You know,” Reiner mumbled, licking down Armin’s smooth chest, “I’ve never blown you.” He planted another sloppy kiss on Armin’s flat belly as he unbuttoned and unzipped his red corduroy Christmas pants and yanked them down. Underneath, Armin was wearing matching little red briefs with a white snowflake pattern. “God, Armin, I wanna marry you.” Reiner put Armin’s cock in his mouth, saliva dripping down the rigid shaft, and promptly passed out. He was awoken an hour later by Armin tapping him on the forehead. “What?” Reiner batted Armin’s hand away and rubbed his cheek, then examined his palm. “Why is my face all sticky?”

“I gave you a facial, you stupid ox.”

Reiner scowled with displeasure. “What the fuck for? That’s sexual harassment.”

“Sexual harassment? You promised me a blowjob and all you did was fall asleep. What else was I supposed to do?” Armin shot back with indignation. “You can’t expect me to have blue balls on Christmas. Here. Open your goddamn present.”

They ended up exchanging rings: a gold-plated band that had to be worn on Armin’s thumb because it was too big for any other finger and engraved with the words ‘Pound Town Baby!’—“I made it in shop class,” Reiner declared proudly—and a much larger ring in stainless steel that had Reiner scratching his head.

“This ain’t gonna fit on any of my fingers, Einstein.”

Armin rolled his eyes. “It’s a _cock_ ring, dummy. You wear it around your junk.” 

“Ohhhh...so, uh, does this mean we love each other?” Reiner asked with a sarcastic grin, but his eyes were warm and full of idiotic sincerity. 

The room went silent. And then Armin burst into tears, _Joy to the World_ blasting from the radio downstairs and filling his heart with happiness.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again, I must give credit where credit is due: Marco, with his pathetic manga, is loosely inspired by the character of 18-year-old Izumi, the clueless otaku from the manga Love Stage!!, who desperately wants to become a professional mangaka. Unbeknownst to Izumi, he totally SUCKS at drawing. His boyfriend Ryōma is also oblivious to Izumi’s complete lack of talent but Jean, in this fic, has more advanced aesthetic sensibilities and is not ignorant of Marco’s deficiencies as an artist. Too bad for Jean. Sometimes ignorance is bliss.
> 
> For those of you who might not know, Depend undergarments are a brand of adult diaper, more or less. You wouldn't believe how many times I've seen people buying them in BULK at Costco. Just thought I'd share that nice little tidbit with you.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Erwin takes Levi on a Christmas/birthday getaway. Speedos are involved. Yeah. Speedos. You know what they are.

The last and only time Erwin had been on a beach was when he was a child. His father had brought him along to an educators’ conference he was attending one summer and the hotel at which they were staying was located right on the ocean. The rocky shoreline was pebbled with dark stones smoothed by the waves and the cold brackish water was full of grasping seaweed that would wrap around his ankles like vegetative fingers and lay stinking in the sun when washed ashore. His most vivid memory, though, besides the stones and the cold water and the smelly seaweed, was the sight of middle aged men wearing skimpy swim trunks, their fatty guts rolling dough-like over their hidden and straining waistbands, sagging buttocks hanging out the back ends. It was NOT a pretty picture, but at nine years of age, what did he know? This was appropriate manly attire for the beach, right?

The beach at South Paradis Bay was nothing like the beach from Erwin’s childhood, thankfully. No, _this_ beach was all white sand, soft and fine as talcum powder, the water almost body temperature and clear blue like the sky reflected above, and instead of putrid seaweed the shore was littered with the most beautiful shells of various shapes and sizes and colors. It was postcard perfect, but the loveliest sight of all was standing right in front of his eyes as Erwin reclined on his towel-draped lounge chair: Levi at the water’s edge, bucket full of shells in one hand, pale skin slowly turning a steamed lobster shade of red under the sun, clad in a teeny tiny ‘mint leaf’ green Speedo. Erwin wore an identical style pair in ‘sapphire’ blue. He noticed with a little dismay that all the other male beachgoers were wearing baggy swim trunks that came down to their knees practically. _Well, shit, this was a beach, not a fucking basketball court_ , he grunted to himself. He looked down at his own barely-there swimsuit, every curve and bulge clearly delineated beneath the stretchy fabric, and felt just a tad too naked. Then he raked his eyes back across Levi’s taut, scantily-covered body and smiled with approval.

Levi had never been to the ocean, had never even been to a lake, and when he had opened his Christmas present with the pair of Speedos nestled in tissue paper the other day, he had shot Erwin a skeptical look at such novelty attire. “ _This_ is what people wear to the beach? To go swimming?” Levi had queried with doubt. The thing provided as much coverage as a jockstrap.

“Turn that frown upside down, kitten,” Erwin had encouraged, holding up his own pair of Speedos, which he had thoughtfully wrapped for himself and put under the tree. “We’ll be a matching set.”

Said frown remained right side up, like a horseshoe hung incorrectly and spilling out all the good luck. “Why don’t we just carry signs saying: WE’RE SO FUCKING GAY!?” Then Levi had held the bandage-sized pair of swim trunks up for another inspection and smirked, “Yeah, okay, let’s gay it up big time. _In your face, breeders!”_

Erwin had already given Levi his birthday gift earlier that morning at breakfast—a brochure of the luxury resort hotel they would be staying at for the next three days, served along with his plate of bacon and eggs on a tray brought to bed—so the Speedos under the tree weren’t a total surprise to Levi. Levi’s Christmas gift to Erwin, though, the one that accompanied the 10,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of a WWII battle scene featuring Panzer and Sherman tanks duking it out, was a total surprise to Erwin. The portrait of Levi standing naked was delicately, sensitively drawn, matted and framed under glass and ready to be hung up and jacked off to without danger of being damaged by cum. Erwin's thick eyebrows had lifted in admiration. “Fucking mother of god…this looks just like you. But where’s your—?”

“I didn’t draw it,” Levi had admitted. “I bought it off of one of my students.”

“Jesus Christ, you have such perverts in your classes! Still…” Erwin couldn’t help but grin. It was obvious to him that Levi hadn’t actually posed au naturel for this portrait because the ‘artist’ had neglected to include Erwin’s favorite part of Levi. _For my eyes only_ , Erwin had thought more than a little possessively.

Later that night, they had tried out their new ‘swing’ after it had taken Erwin three failed attempts to screw it into a ceiling joist in their bedroom. As an extra bonus, Erwin had also hung up the framed drawing of Levi on the wall directly across so he could have it in his line of sight as he fucked Levi on the swing.

“I think we’ve finally got this gift-giving thing worked out,” Erwin had grunted as he slid in slow and deep. Levi was suspended in midair at the perfect height for Erwin, strapped into the leather harness of the swing, his legs splayed wide and sexy, his hands gripping the chains over his head. After a few hard satisfying thrusts punctuated by Levi’s filthy cries, Erwin had pulled out all the way to the sound of Levi exhaling a breathy moan in protest, his hole pink and stretched, empty and begging to be filled again. “What a view,” Erwin had rasped in awe. “Goddamn it, kitten, look at you, all spread out for me and so ready for more. Could anything be more beautiful?”

Could anything be more beautiful? No, thought Erwin, nothing was more beautiful than that small, raven-haired man bent over the water, still utterly youthful in appearance though he was very much NOT a teenager. And they certainly were a matching set since they were the only men flaunting their junk so shamelessly on the beach, but Levi didn’t seem to pay any mind to this disconcerting fact; he was too absorbed in collecting shells like a child getting his very first taste of the ocean—no cares, just simple, easy joy. Levi, who had turned thirty just a day ago but was now caught up in wonder like a three-year-old. Levi, who had known so much misery and so little happiness in his troubled past but was now free of that misery, happy in the moment. Before he knew it, Erwin was out of his chair and down in the shallows with him, the soft sand giving way between his toes. He wrapped his hands around Levi’s slender waist and picked him straight out of the water, kissing him in full view, the bucket of shells dropped and tipped over, spilling its contents in the warm surf.

“Erwin! Th’ fuck?” cried Levi. He struggled in Erwin’s embrace, angry over this sappy display of affection—and, oh, the lost shells!—but then he saw the tears glistening in Erwin’s eyes, eyes sparkling and blue like the water around them, and it stopped him cold. “Erwin? What?” When Erwin kissed him again—his mouth melting into his with such urgent tenderness, as if Erwin wanted to give him his very life—Levi _knew_ ; he didn’t even need to hear Erwin say the words. So Levi let himself go limp in Erwin’s arms, let his own tears finally fall. And he said the words first, weeping, whispering them haltingly into the side of Erwin’s face, his breath a caress against his cheek before the three words were carried away by the ocean breeze. He smiled when he felt Erwin’s chest heaving and shuddering against his own. He had spoken the truth at last, laid himself bare, and Erwin had heard him; there was no taking it back. “I missed my period,” Levi joked in a lame attempt at recovering his pride, but inside his heart was tearing apart and stitching together again, knitting around Erwin’s soul like a tree trunk growing through a chain link fence, merging, fusing, two separate entities becoming one.

Erwin squeezed Levi tighter and laughed into his sun-warmed skin. “Then I guess I’ll have to make an honest boy out of you, won’t I?” He set Levi down on his feet and then lowered himself onto one knee, went all Medieval knight on him, making Levi groan in embarrassment. He took Levi’s left hand and kissed his ring finger. “Right here,” Erwin said, his voice ragged and wrecked with love. Then he placed Levi’s hand over his own wildly beating heart. “Right here. Forever.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, betcha didn’t think I’d go all SUPER DUPER ROMANTIC at the end, did ya? That was probably enough sugar to make you diabetic for life, but I wanted to conclude this fic with something unapologetically sweet.
> 
> Thanks so much for reading and leaving kudos and comments. I had loads of fun writing this story and your feedback was all a part of the joy. I hope you got some joy out of it too.
> 
> For any Eruri shippers, I’ve just started working on another fic called "Tea and Sympathy." It’s a modern day AU mash-up of Shingeki no Kyojin and Hyakujitsu no Bara and features Levi x Erwin as one of the main pairings. A post-time skip Eren also figures into the story and I’ll probably include Armin because I can’t help myself. If you’re curious, check it out and let me know what you think.


End file.
